Abstract
This articles considers the larger, external and the micro, internal forces that impinge on the nature and impact of contemporary research-ethics codes. The larger forces that shape the impact of codes involve the increase in public and governmental concern with privacy protection, changes within disciplines, and the rise of research entrepreneurship. In terms of micro-level forces, the article explores the continuing problems associated with the bio-medical approach to research-ethics, on-going instability for some types of social research, slippages between REBs and researchers, and variability of local interpretations of ethics codes. A number of ethics-review fads also produce instability in the ethics regime.
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Notes
During my tenure as Sociology Book-Review Editor of the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, May 2002–May 2004, some 200 titles passed my desk; only 27 (14%) actually involved research participants.
Since 2003 I have interviewed, held discussions with, or listened to nearly 170 academics talk about the impact of research ethics on research.
“Notes on Presentations” refers to the field notes I have taken during some 70 public and academic presentations on ethics in research.
My suggestion would be for the researcher to initiate the immediate research on disaster, but would submit his research for REB approval once he has firmed up his or her research plans, also demonstrate to the REB that he or she has followed ethical principles of research, such as confidentiality, respect for the person, anonymity, etc.
On the fateful day of 11 September 2001 after terrorists struck down the World-Trade Towers in New York City, a colleague poked her head into my office to announce the imminent collapse of the Towers. Throughout the rest of the day I took notes of conversations among students, support staff, and faculty in the hallways, and was fascinated by how news travels, urban legends in the making. For example, when I emerged from a class at 11:30 a.m., I overheard a story of how a student’s uncle who worked in the Towers, was not feeling well that day and had stayed home. It was remarkable that an event taking place in a city some 13 h of a drive away and within 1 h had produced an intimate account of someone’s life. It would be quite impossible to continue with that sort of research, where one’s “research-self” got the better of one’s personal curiosity. Did I violate ethical norms by publishing this account even in this footnote?
SSSI stands for the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism
I noticed there was already a poster on bulletin boards at a university’s seeking volunteers for a research project, but a member of an REB told me that the REB has not yet considered the application. Is this an example of a research’s being jumpstarted (Fieldnote, 9 Feb. 2006) later needing retro-active approval?
I use the Canadian term “Research Ethics Boards.” These boards carry different names in other countries. In the United States, “Institutional Review Boards” (IRBs) is commonly used, while in the United Kingdom, the term is “local research ethics committees” (LRECs).
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a grant (no. 410-2003-0318) for the purpose of investigating the impact of research-ethics policies on social research. I also wish to thank Dr Deborah Poff for her encouragement and invitation to publish this paper. Dr Luc Thériault kindly read an early draft.
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van den Hoonaard, W.C. New Angles and Tangles in the Ethics Review of Research. J Acad Ethics 4, 261–274 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-006-9022-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-006-9022-4