Purpose

Scientific governance exists to protect the credibility of the work as HIW grows from an independent initiative into a broader collaborative research structure. Governance should make it possible to distinguish scientific judgement from funding, advocacy, institutional pressure, and personal preference.

Evidence and claims

Claims should be proportionate to the evidence supporting them. Established findings, plausible interpretations, developing proposals, and open questions should be labelled differently.

Methods, assumptions, limitations, validation status, and material changes should be documented whenever this is possible without compromising privacy, consent, test security, or legitimate restrictions.

Independence and conflicts

Funding, partnership, professional affiliation, commercial interest, and other relevant conflicts should not determine scientific conclusions. Material conflicts should be disclosed when they could reasonably affect interpretation or public trust.

Support does not buy a conclusion.

Review and correction

The project should invite substantive criticism, distinguish disagreement from misconduct, and maintain routes for correction. Errors should be corrected visibly when they materially affect interpretation.

Major frameworks and tools should move through staged review and validation rather than being presented as finished because they are publicly available.

People, data and institutions

Research involving people, private data, health information, employment settings, educational records, or institutions requires appropriate consent, privacy safeguards, data minimisation, access controls, ethics review where required, and clear limits on use.

No contributor group should be treated merely as a source of data.

Public accountability

Governance should become more formal as the project becomes more consequential. The public record should make clear what is active, what is proposed, who is responsible for decisions, what evidence supports a claim, and what protections apply.