Reducing barriers to ethics in neuroscience

Illes, Judy; Tairyan, Kate; Federico, Carole A; Tabet, Aline; Glover, Gary H.

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2010.00167

Cited by 14 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Data from that study and others suggest that researchers see ethics as complex, overregulated, and overly time consuming [15,16]. However, considerable differences also exist between our neurodegeneration research study and the neuroimaging study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Untapped ethical resources for neurodegeneration research

et al. 2011

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BackgroundThe research community has a mandate to discover effective treatments for neurodegenerative disorders. The ethics landscape surrounding this mandate is in a constant state of flux, and ongoing challenges place ever greater demands on investigators to be accountable to the public and to answer questions about the implications of their work for health care, society, and policy.MethodsWe surveyed US-based investigators involved in neurodegenerative diseases research about how they value ethics-related issues, what motivates them to give consideration to those issues, and the barriers to doing so. Using the NIH CRISP database we identified 1,034 researchers with relevant, active grants and invited them to complete an online questionnaire. We received 193 responses. We used exploratory factor analysis to transform individual survey questions into a smaller set of factors, and linear regression to understand the effect of key variables of interest on the factor scores.ResultsEthics-related issues clustered into two groups: research ethics and external influences. Heads of research groups viewed issues of research ethics to be more important than the other respondents. Concern about external influences was related to overall interest in ethics. Motivators clustered into five groups: ensuring public understanding, external forces, requirements, values, and press and public. Heads of research groups were more motivated to ensure public understanding of research than the other respondents. Barriers clustered into four groups: lack of resources, administrative burden, relevance to the research, and lack of interest. Perceived lack of ethics resources was a particular barrier for investigators working in drug discovery.ConclusionsThe data suggest that senior level neuroscientists working in the field of neurodegeneration (ND), and drug discovery specifically, are motivated to consider ethics issues related to their work, but the perceived lack of ethics resources thwarts their efforts. With bioethics centres at more than 50% of the institutions at which these respondents reside, the neuroscience and bioethics communities appear to be disconnected. Dedicated ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) programs, such as those fully integrated into genetics and regenerative medicine, provide models for achieving meaningful partnerships not yet adequately realized for scholars and trainees interested in drug discovery for ND.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Untapped ethical resources for neurodegeneration research

et al. 2011

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“…However, it must be acknowledged that the effectiveness of such committee ethics has been questioned on a number of grounds. The general barriers to the debate and implementation of best practice include lack of resources and administrative burden (Illes et al 2010). Additionally, researchers actively engaged in animal research, and others who may be seen to have a vested interest in animal research, have been suggested to be over-represented on such committees in the USA (Hansen 2013).…”

Section: Rules and Recommendations: The Need For Flexibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

What’s Special about the Ethical Challenges of Studying Disorders with Altered Brain Activity?

Cassaday

2014

Ethical Issues in Behavioral Neuroscience

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Where there is no viable alternative, studies of neuronal activity are conducted on animals. The use of animals, particularly for invasive studies of the brain, raises a number of ethical issues. Practical or normative ethics are enforced by legislation, in relation to the dominant welfare guidelines developed in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Guidelines have typically been devised to cover all areas of biomedical research using animals in general, and thus lack any specific focus on neuroscience studies at the level of the ethics, although details of the specific welfare recommendations are different for invasive studies of the brain. Ethically, there is no necessary distinction between neuroscience and other biomedical research in that the brain is a final common path for suffering, irrespective of whether this involves any direct experience of pain. One exception arises in the case of in vitro studies, which are normally considered as an acceptable replacement for in vivo studies. However, to the extent sentience is possible, maintaining central nervous system tissue outside the body naturally raises ethical questions. Perhaps the most intractable challenge to the ethical use of animals in order to model neuronal disorder is presented by the logical impasse in the argument that the animal is similar enough to justify the validity of the experimental model, but sufficiently different in sentience and capacity for suffering, for the necessary experimental procedures to be permissible.

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“…In other words, a precondition for making business studies a science as well as a consequence of the resulting belief in determinism has been the explicit denial of any role of moral or ethical considerations in the practice of management. (Ghoshal, 2005, p. 79) Neuroethicists have already identified that ethics training for researchers involved in this type of research is a matter of priority (Illes et al, 2010), a notion others also extend to teaching these issues on MBA programs (Morein-Zamir & Sahakian, 2009). The framework for research ethics (FRE) issued by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, 2010) may be a helpful starting point to consult for those responsible for doctoral training or those involved in leadership development programs, as it delineates research projects of a less risky nature in terms of ethical ramifications from those that are considered carrying more than minimal risks.…”

Section: Future Of Neuroscience In Leadership Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pathologizing the Healthy But Ineffective

Lindebaum

2012

Journal of Management Inquiry

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A number of studies seek to integrate leadership research with the field of neuroscience, arguing that neuroscience can aid scholars and practitioners to identify and develop leaders with what I refer to as socially desirable brain characteristics, whereas those leaders not equipped with such characteristics can be subjected to interventions based on neuroscientific principles or methods. Scrutinizing an emerging body of research, I argue that many leadership scholars and practitioners overlook the wider ethical implications of neuroscientific approaches to identifying and developing effective leaders. Given the mounting interest in the topic, I also outline a number of useful sources and debates to better respond ethically to the use of neuroscience in leadership research.

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Reducing barriers to ethics in neuroscience

Cited by 14 publications

References 13 publications

Untapped ethical resources for neurodegeneration research

Untapped ethical resources for neurodegeneration research

What’s Special about the Ethical Challenges of Studying Disorders with Altered Brain Activity?

Pathologizing the Healthy But Ineffective

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