Skeptical Doubts

1. Skeptical Doubts

2. Introduction • Are there special ethical problems relating to research? • Are such problems best addressed via an ethics committee?

3. What is research? • (an attempt at) organised, systematised discovery • A priori or empirical, passive or active, observing or engaging • Someone might suggest a threefold distinction: • input, research, application. But: • This isn’t correct • Even if it were, there might still be ethical issues.

4. What is an ethical problem? • Wrong to know – bad for us • An ethical problem – some risk of harm – making things worse failure to benefit – not making things better a rights violation • Not all research involves such risks • Not all research is morally problematic • The dominant, or current concerns are more focussed

5. What is a research subject? • Someone, or something on which research is done- observed or investigated • Something that can be harmed – a human being, animal, or plant(?) • Something harm to which matters morally. So not plants(?) (Research and animal ethics?) Two refinements: • Human beings v human organisms. • The living v the dead.

6. Research and the living human subject Consider the data. Distinguish • collected earlier, by others v collected now, by researchers • Passive observation v active engagement • Interrogation v manipulation • External change v internal change (non-medical v medical) Plausibly, the risks of harm increase as we work down. But such risks are widespread outside a research context.

7. Harms – a broader view Research may be especially problematic as • A greater percentage of participants are at risk • There are fewer countervailing benefits • Benefits cannot be assessed • Benefits don’t come to those at risk • Lose trust, and future generations are harmed. • Public money is involved. • The ethical issues relating to research are more problematic than those elsewhere.

8. Who should scrutinise research? Researchers In favour: know the field; ‘professional’. Against: dubious motivations; atrocities. Subjects In favour: able to weigh risks to themselves; respect for autonomy and the right to consent. Against: don’t understand protocols; need protection from, e.g., coercion.

9. Committees

10. Committees can be expected to get hard cases right Some judging bodies are considered to be unproblematic; REC’s are relevantly similar; so REC’s should be considered to be unproblematic. E.g., juries. But there are disanalogies between REC’s and juries: Juries are making retrospective legal rulings; REC’s are providing prospective ethical evaluation. Legal rulings are objective in a sense in which REC decisions are not. There is no equivalent in the case of REC’s to a legal framework that includes laws based on precedents. There is no equivalent in the case of REC’s to a jury’s being directed by a judge and other officers of the court.

11. Committees: composition Ethicists: over-focused on normative theory; studying metaethics doesn’t make one better at judging the permissibility of research. Related professionals (e.g., doctor): neither ethical expertise nor the lay perspective. Specialist members (e.g., statistician, medico-legal expert, data protection officer): neither ethical expertise nor the lay perspective. Non-related professionals but with moral training (e.g., priest): quasi-ethical expert with idiosyncratic ideology. Lay members: tend to replicate other roles; ‘the lay perspective’ is oxymoronic.

12. Other worries The REC is a source of management control and a way of back-covering. Too much governance results in ethically complacent researchers. The opportunity costs of research governance is very high.

13. Conclusion A quandary Research should not go unscrutinised. But there’s a trilemma between giving authority to scrutinise to researchers, subjects and committees. There’s no obvious fourth source of moral authority. We’ll probably just bumble along as we have been.