RSS 1.0Research Ethics Philosophical
Browse by
The Research Ethics Philosophical collection focuses on the relations and differences between ethics and research, between on one side an instrumental rationality, which rules sciences and technical innovation, and the ethical dimension of the human action. It gathers documents on research understood philosophically as, on one side, a possible way to renew life, thus on research as an ethics of utopias. Utopias offer a glimpse of an alternative to dominant system dissatisfaction, open the image of a world not yet in existence that is different from and better than the world we inhabit now.Research norms and values mean on the other hand concrete applications, in various fields, on ethics in research involving human beings. Setting research standards in empirical sciences and publication related research, finding rules and common praxis to reaffirm the anthropological ground of knowledge formation and erudition is a long path, a field in development, coextensive with that of ethics in higher education, and permeable to technological evolutions inside our societies.
Recent Submissions
-
Public involvement in the governance of populationlevel biomedical research : unresolved questions and future directionsPopulation-level biomedical research offers new opportunities to improve population health, but also raises new challenges to traditional systems of research governance and ethical oversight. Partly in response to these challenges, various models of public involvement in research are being introduced. Yet, the ways in which public involvement should meet governance challenges are not well understood. We conducted a qualitative study with 36 experts and stakeholders using the World Cafe method to identify key governance challenges and explore how public involvement can meet these challenges. This brief report discusses four cross-cutting themes from the study: the need to move beyond individual consent; issues in benefit and data sharing; the challenge of delineating and understanding publics; and the goal of clarifying justifications for public involvement. The report aims to provide a starting point for making sense of the relationship between public involvement and the governance of population-level biomedical research, showing connections, potential solutions and issues arising at their intersection. We suggest that, in population-level biomedical research, there is a pressing need for a shift away from conventional governance frameworks focused on the individual and towards a focus on collectives, as well as to foreground ethical issues around social justice and develop ways to address cultural diversity, value pluralism and competing stakeholder interests. There are many unresolved questions around how this shift could be realised, but these unresolved questions should form the basis for developing justificatory accounts and frameworks for suitable collective models of public involvement in population-level biomedical research governance.
-
Epistemic appropriation and the ethics of engaging with trans community knowledge in the context of mental healthcare researchAbstract Mental healthcare research increasingly focuses the needs of trans people and, in doing so, acknowledges knowledge and epistemic resources developed in trans communities. In this article, we aim to raise awareness of an ethical issue described by Emmalon Davis that may arise in the context of engaging with community knowledge and epistemic resources: the risk of epistemic appropriation. It is composed of two harms (1) a detachment of epistemic resources developed in the originating community and (2) a misdirection of these epistemic resources for epistemic goals of a dominant community. In this article, we map and discuss the ethical concerns in using knowledge originating in trans communities in terms of epistemic appropriation in the context of mental healthcare research. We first argue that misgendering, failing to reference non-academic sources and a lack of attribution in community authorship are forms of epistemic detachment. Second, we problematize cases of epistemic misdirection of trans epistemic resources, focusing on the examples of detransition and transition regret. We discuss harms related to epistemic appropriation in relationship to risks to safety. The article aims to raise awareness about the risk of epistemic appropriation both in researchers engaging with trans knowledge as well as in mental healthcare workers who seek information on trans.
-
The Ethical Implications of Using Social Media to Engage and Retain Justice-Involved Youth in Behavioral Health ResearchGiven its popularity among youth ages 13-17, social media is a promising avenue for engaging and retaining historically hard-to-reach youth in longitudinal research. Social media use in longitudinal research involving youth, however, has preceded development of best practices for ethical use. This article describes the ethical challenges and considerations of using social media to engage and retain youth within the context of a randomized controlled trial of a group-based adolescent substance use intervention. Best practices for addressing ethical challenges are also provided using the Belmont Principle as a guiding framework. As social media becomes more commonly used to engage and retain youth in clinical research studies, researchers must address emerging ethical concerns within project protocols.
-
“We are the heroes because we are ready to die for this country”:Participants’ Decision-making and Grounded Ethics in an Ebola vaccine clinical trial.The 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic presented a challenging setting in which to carry out clinical trials. This paper reports findings from social science research carried out in Kambia, Northern Sierra Leone during first year of an Ebola vaccine trial (August 2015–July 2016). The social science team collected data through ethnographic observation, 42 in depth interviews; 4 life narratives; 200 exit interviews; 31 key informant interviews; and 8 focus group discussions with trial participants and community members not enrolled in the trial. Whilst research often focuses on why people refuse vaccination, we instead explore participant motivations for volunteering for the study, in spite of prevailing anxieties, rumours and mistrust during and after the Ebola outbreak. In so doing the paper contributes to on-going debates about research ethics and community engagement in resource poor contexts, offering reflections from an emergency and post-epidemic setting. We analyse participants’ perceptions of the risks and benefits of participations, highlighting the importance of a contextual approach. We focus on four types of motivation: altruism; curiosity and hope; health-seeking; and notions of exchange, and argue for the role of social science in developing grounded research ethics and community engagement strategies that can take into account context and local realities.
-
A randomized trial of a lab-embedded discourse intervention to improve research ethicsWe report a randomized trial of a research ethics training intervention designed to enhance ethics communication in university science and engineering laboratories, focusing specifically on authorship and data management. The intervention is a project-based research ethics curriculum that was designed to enhance the ability of science and engineering research laboratory members to engage in reason giving and interpersonal communication necessary for ethical practice. The randomized trial was fielded in active faculty-led laboratories at two US research-intensive institutions. Here, we show that laboratory members perceived improvements in the quality of discourse on research ethics within their laboratories and enhanced awareness of the relevance and reasons for that discourse for their work as measured by a survey administered over 4 mo after the intervention. This training represents a paradigm shift compared with more typical module-based or classroom ethics instruction that is divorced from the everyday workflow and practices within laboratories and is designed to cultivate a campus culture of ethical science and engineering research in the very work settings where laboratory members interact.
-
Attitudes and Knowledge of Adolescents in Jordan Regarding the Ethics of Social Media Data Use for Research PurposesThis study assessed the awareness and attitudes of adolescents in Jordan concerning the ethics of using their social media data for scientific studies. Using an online survey, 393 adolescents were recruited (mean age: 17.2 years ± 1.8). The results showed that 88% of participants were using their real personal information on social media sites, with males more likely to provide their information than females. More than two thirds of participants (72.5%) were aware that researchers may use their data for research purposes, with the majority believing that informed consent must be obtained from both the adolescents and their parents. However, more than three quarters of those surveyed (76%) did not trust the results of research that depended on collecting data from social media. These findings suggest that adolescents in Jordan understood most of the ethical aspects related to the utilization of their data from social media websites for research studies.
-
Addressing ethical challenges in HIV prevention research with people who inject drugsDespite recent advances in HIV prevention and treatment, high HIV incidence persists among people who inject drugs (PWID). Difficult legal and political environments and lack of services for PWID likely contribute to high HIV incidence. Some advocates question whether any HIV prevention research is ethically justified in settings where healthcare system fails to provide basic services to PWID and where implementation of research findings is fraught with political barriers. Ethical challenges in research with PWID include concern about whether research evidence will be translated into practice; concerns that research might exacerbate background risks; and ethical challenges regarding the standard of HIV prevention in research. While these questions arise in other research settings, for research with PWID, these questions are especially controversial. This paper analyses four ethical questions in determining whether research could be ethically acceptable: (1) Can researchers ensure that research does not add to the burden of social harms and poor health experienced by PWID? (2) Should research be conducted in settings where it is uncertain whether research findings will be translated into practice? (3) When best practices in prevention and care are not locally available, what standard of care and prevention is ethically appropriate? (4) Does the conduct of research in settings with oppressive policies constitute complicity? We outline specific criteria to address these four ethical challenges. We also urge researchers to join the call to action for policy change to provide proven safe and effective HIV prevention and harm reduction interventions for PWID around the world.
-
Slippery slope arguments as precautionary arguments: a new way of understanding the concern about geoengineering researchIt has been argued that geoengineering research should not be pursued because of a slippery slope from research to problematic deployment. These arguments have been thought weak or defective on the basis of interpretations that treat the arguments as relying on dubious premises. The paper urges a new interpretation of these arguments as precautionary arguments, i.e. as relying on a precautionary principle. This interpretation helps us better appreciate the potential normative force of the worries, their potential policy relevance, and the kind of evidence required by slippery slope arguments. Understood as precautionary arguments, it is clear that slippery slope arguments against geoengineering capture concerns that are worth taking seriously.
-
The Marginalist Revolution in Legal ThoughtFor legal policy the two most important scientific ideas of the nineteenth century were Darwinism and marginalism. Both became the starting points for the great revolutions in the social sciences that took place in the 1870s and later. The central principle of Darwinism is the theory of evolution by natural selection. Because nature produces many more offspring than each niche in the environment can accommodate, individuals of a particular species must compete to survive. Purely at random each individual acquires from its parents a set of characteristics that are different from those of any other individual. Those who inherit characteristics that give them a competitive advantage tend to live long enough to have offspring of their own. They pass these characteristics on to future generations, who then continue the struggle. The starting point for Darwinian analysis of the human individual is the environment. Both the human organism and its behavior are a product of the environment, shaped over many generations. The organism's choices are determined by the situation around it. By contrast to Darwinism, marginalism begins with the human being as an autonomous decisionmaker. Each individual has a certain amount of wealth and a collection of wants, but as his desire for some particular thing is fulfilled, his wish for more of that thing diminishes. The individual then maximizes his satisfaction by purchasing goods in such quantities so that, at the margin, the amount of satisfaction each gives him is precisely the same.
-
On Burning, Saving and Stealing LettersWhat happens when the social scientist's vulnerable, at risk subject meets the robust subject of oral history? I hope this seminar will tell me. For the subject I bring with me, from a training in literary criticism, is neither vulnerable nor robust but tragicomically both, agent of its own misfortune. This is the subject who puts their lover's letters in an archive for an uncertainly dreamed-for posterity; and the subject who discovers their letters have been put there by their ex-lesbian-ex-wife; and the subject who agrees to archive those texts for - well for more than the record. And, most of all, I bring along the subject who wishes then to read, quote, interpret such letters in her own uncertainly dreamed-for career-book. How can we be ethical about using personal archives, while also enjoying the ambiguity of lovers', donors', archivists', researchers' stories? What codes of conduct might acknowledge the contrariness of all our characters, what forms of university research ethics may indeed be instrumental in producing a contrary subject? And can an ethics based on care rather than justice help? I will explore these questions in relation to my search for letters by women and men involved in women's liberation struggles since the 1970s, and why I ended my book with a meditation 'On Burning, Saving and Stealing Letters'.
-
Trust me, I'm a researcher: Experiences of archiving dataLanguage and identity in the narratives of Polish people - 30 interviews in Greater Manchester - RA recent migrant, PI second generation Polish - Focus on methodological issues in cross language research and substantive focus on identity and language
-
Informed consent for reusing data: Is it possible? Does it matter?Informed consent for reusing data: Is it possible? Does it matter?
-
The history of bioethicsThe assumption that developments in technologies and societies create new ethical issues for health and medical research is intuitively appealing. However, a closer inspection of the history of bioethics reveals a surprising consistency in the core issues that have formed the basis of bioethical debates over time. If the issues involved in bioethical debates remain essentially constant, are new discussions and new guidelines and principles-produced in the wake of research scandals or inspired by the introduction of new technologies-redundant? This article examines some of the implications of the history of bioethics for understanding current ethical debates and for the formation of a culture of ethical conduct in health research. © 2012 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
-
Canadian journal of bioethics : = Revue canadienne de bioéthiqueHeinOnline, [2018]-
-
Benefit sharing in genomic and biobanking research in Uganda: Perceptions of researchers and research ethics committee membersBackground: Genomic and biobanking research has increased in Africa over the past few years. This has raised pertinent ethical, legal, and societal concerns for stakeholders such as sample or data ownership, commercialization, and benefit sharing. There is limited awareness of the concept of benefit sharing by stakeholders in sub-Saharan Africa.Objective: This study aimed to explore the perceptions of researchers and research ethics committee members on benefit sharing in international collaborative genomic and biobanking research.Methods: Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 researchers and 19 research ethics committee members. A thematic approach was used to interpret the results.Results: Six themes emerged from the data and these included perceptions on the benefits of genomic and biobanking research; discussion of benefit sharing with participants during the informed consent process; legal implications of benefit sharing and the role of material transfer agreements; equity and fairness in sharing the benefits of genomic research; perceived barriers to fair benefit sharing; and recommendations for fostering fair and equitable benefit sharing in genomic and biobanking research. Most respondents clearly understood the various forms of benefits of genomic and biobanking research and opined that such benefits should be fairly and equitably shared with low and middle-income country researchers and their institutions, and research communities. The perceived barriers to the fair benefit sharing unfavorable include power disparities, weak research regulatory frameworks, and lack of scientific integrity.Conclusion: Overall, respondents believed that the distribution of the advantages of genomic and biobanking research in North-South collaborative research was not equitable nor fair, and that the playing field was not leveled. Therefore, we advocate the following for fair and equitable benefit sharing: Building the capacities and empowering research scientists in developing nations; strengthening regulatory frameworks and extending the purview of the research ethics committee in the development and implementation of material transfer agreements; and meaningfully involving local research communities in benefit sharing negotiations.
-
Wissenschaftliche FairnessPlagiate und andere Fälle wissenschaftlichen Fehlverhaltens landen regelmäßig in den Medien und geben auch Außenstehenden Einblicke in problematische Forschungsprozesse. Während diese Skandale ein Schlaglicht auf offensichtliche oder absichtliche Fehler werfen, sind die alltäglichen Herausforderungen wissenschaftlicher Praxis weitaus komplexer. Die Autor*innen analysieren die Vielschichtigkeit und Verwobenheit von fragwürdigen Forschungspraktiken, Machtstrukturen und Fehlverhalten. Ihr Konzept der wissenschaftlichen Fairness dient als Folie zur Analyse bestehender Problematiken und zeigt in einem Gegenentwurf Handlungsoptionen für mehr Integrität, Verantwortung und wissenschaftsethisch gute Forschung auf.
-
Global Media Ethics and the Digital RevolutionThis volume responds to the challenges posed by the rapid developments in satellite TV and digital technologies, addressing media ethics from a global perspective to discuss how we can understand journalism practice in its cultural contexts. An international team of contributors draw upon global and non-Western traditions to discuss the philosophical origins of ethics and the tension that exists between media institutions, the media market and political/ideological influencers. The chapters then unveil the discrepancies among international journalists in abiding by the ethics of the profession and the extent to which media ethics are understood and applied in their local context/environment. Arguing that the legitimacy of ethics comes not from the definition per se, but from the extent to which it leads to social good, the book posits this should be the media’s raison d'être to abide by globally accepted ethical norms in order to serve the common good. Taking a truly global approach to the question of media ethics, this volume will be an important resource for scholars and students of journalism, communication studies, media studies, sociology, politics and cultural studies.