Research scientists do have specialized training, knowledge and skills and use these abilities to benefit both individuals and society, so they are professionals by definition. A group agreement, the contract, the values of the group made tangible and concrete, guidelines for how to use the specialized skills for benefit. It is discipline and context specific. A professional code of ethics is discipline and context specific. Yes, both types of codes have many shared values, some of which are honesty, fairness, doing no harm and the desire to improve the quality of life for as many people as possible.
Professional codes can be difficult to enforce.
In an attempt to both set standards and allow for individual moral freedom a code can end up as only a minimal standard. Joe Herkert agrees with this when asking if codes can lead to minimal standards. In addition, Dr. Herkert brings up the particular responsibility a professional has when acting with moral autonomy. He points out that professional codes are context specific to the tasks and skills at hand and that to talk about moral dilemmas in the abstract is not useful. What makes sense is to be concrete since issues relevant to one profession may be irrelevant to another.