Un-ethical review? Why it is wrong to apply the medical model of research governance to human geography

Abstract

The Economic and Social Research Council, the body which funds much social science in the UK, recently imposed on UK social science a system of research ethics governance already well established in other areas of research and in much of the rest of the developed world. This system requires that research involving human subjects receive prior ethical approval from a committee made up of, typically, multidisciplinary researchers and lay people. Our aim in this paper is to prompt debate about the purpose and practice of such an anticipatory ethical review. We begin by describing the rich and varied ethical and political debates ongoing in human geography. We argue that these are, at best, ignored and, at worst, threatened by this system of ethical review by committee. We describe the emergence of these formal mechanisms of research governance and important differences between the ethical contexts, history, and demands of research in the medical and social sciences. The paper draws on empirical research investigating National Health Service (NHS) research ethics committees to propose three salutary lessons geographers would do well to consider from experience elsewhere with ethical review. We argue that in review by committee deliberations extend beyond the ethical to include the methodological, that the system is a self-perpetuating and increasingly rule-bound mechanism, and that despite a rhetoric of accountability it is a system as obscure to outsiders as professional ethics.

La recherche herméneutique en management face à la juridictionnalisation de l’activité scientifique : analyse du problème et exploration de réponses

“…Dans cette perspective, un principe très pragmatique fait consensus : « there is no point spending time and energy re-inventing the wheel, if the existing medical model provides a good way of dealing with the ethical problems » (Dyer & Demeritt, 2009). Encore faut-il que les problèmes en question soient universels.…”

“…Ce qu'interdisent, ou presque, les conditions actuelles de publication, qui limitent drastiquement les possibilités de description des conditions opérationnelles des recherches : les questions éthiques sont le plus souvent évacuées, au profit de celles méthodologiques. Alors même que la réflexivité est essentielle, en toute recherche hermé-neutique, elle n'est usuellement pas rapportée (Dyer & Demeritt, 2009). Afin que les dimensions réflexive et inventive, créative, puissent prévaloir sur celle normative et administrative, les aspects éthiques d'une recherche doivent trouver leur place dans toute publication scientifique -y compris indirectement, avec des compléments d'informations disponibles en ligne, par exemple.…”

IRBs as Asset for Ethics Education in Geography

“…By 1979, this oversight proceeded according to three principles articulated in the Belmont Report: respect for persons, beneficence, and distributive justice in the selection of research participants (Yanow and SchwartzShea 2008). These principles have continued to inform the standards of ethical review in the United States, yet the scope of their application in the United States has widened since being established (for an international comparative perspective of institutional ethical review, see Israel and Hay 2006;Dyer and Demeritt 2009).…”

“…A prominent thread focuses on the conceptual differences between experimental and interpretive research and the difficulties that arise when a regulatory regime calibrated to the former reviews the latter (Israel and Hay 2006;Levine and Skedsvold 2008;Yanow and SchwartzShea 2008;Dyer and Demeritt 2009). For instance, Dyer and Demeritt (2009) made the point that many IRBs are crafted to regulate a clinical model of experimental research in which risks to participants might range from painful to life threatening. But when this model is applied to social science research projects that involve some type of qualitative research methods, most of which do not encompass risks beyond those encountered in everyday life, it tends to limit unnecessarily the production of knowledge.…”

Gaining Institutional Permission: Researching Precarious Legal Status in Canada

“…This has led recent publications to suggest that the reach of the ERB has become unwieldy as the ethics protocol may not be well suited to projects in the social sciences and humanities (Bledsoe et al 2007;Dyer and Demeritt 2009;Greyson and Miles 2005;Sikes and Piper 2008;Stark 2006). Dyer and Demeritt (2009) argue that "the ethical frameworks applied by formal ethical review processes ignore… wider normative and political concerns at best, and at worst actively subvert ongoing efforts to infuse [research] practice with an ethical sensibility"(p.48). While we agree with their critique that successful negotiation of the formal ethical review process does not mean a researcher's approach or outcomes will be ethical (and vice versa), in our situation the ERB served to highlight legal issues that would have been problematic in our research regardless of their counsel.…”