What is the responsibility of a researcher?

Physicians are to “choose wisely” and assess the cost-benefit ratio; that is to run a test only if its potential benefit outweighs the cost and potential harm. Perhaps, researchers have a greater responsibility to observe the same principle before committing precious resources. A physician’s poor “choices” may harm a few; but the published work of a researcher may be used to harm many.

For example, a study that presuppose and label any observed disparity in pay between male/female or majority/visible minority physician as “inequity” is imprecise and perhaps fundamentally harmful. It further divides, incites distrusts and most of all distracts from the society’s real need to embrace our TRUE differences – the difference in our neurodiversities and experiences.
Such study can fuel divisive strategies used, knowingly or unknowingly, by politicians seek electoral attention by promote fear, resentment and gross generalizations. Generalizations based on some imagined or “superficially observed differences” (between earlier vs recent immigrants; descendants of colonizer/colonized; subscriber of one religion vs another; rich vs poor; one sexual orientation vs another; one skin color vs another; believers of on dogma vs another; one age group vs another; one social class vs another, one community vs another; one nation vs another; etc.)

I think focusing on superficial and outward differences will only promote inequity. I think the only true inequity is in awareness; and it can only be solved by increasing, through authentic conversations, the collective awareness of our common humanities such as pain, suffering, illness and death.