April 2013
British social scientists are drawing up a common set
of ethical principles aimed at freeing research from what they see as excessive
ethics oversight frameworks that hamper their ability to improve social
understanding.
According to Robert Dingwall, professor of social
science at Nottingham Trent University, a "free" social science research base is
as important to a healthy democracy as a free press. But in the past decade,
British and international funders have required universities to vet all research
involving human subjects via institutional ethics committees.
"You can imagine how outraged journalists would feel
if they had to pre-check with a committee that their questions would not upset
someone," he said.
Dingwall, a member of an Academy of Social Sciences
working group on the issue, said committee members often had no expertise in
ethics or the research field in question, and were primarily concerned with the
university’s reputation. Their risk aversion fed back to academics, who were
often disinclined to undertake research that could incur disapproval even if it
was potentially important.
The situation was exacerbated, Dingwall said, by the
application to social science of frameworks developed for biomedicine. He said
the balance of individual risk and social benefit was different in the social
sciences because most research posed a minimal risk to individuals and offered
significant benefit to the community.
He said that although the U.S. and Canada have
recognized that the regulatory system was in crisis, Britain has yet to join
efforts to redress it.
The Academy of Social Sciences working group, chaired
by Janet Lewis, a visiting professor in Middlesex University’s School of Law,
last week hosted the first of a series of symposia with learned societies, the
Economic and Social Research Council and other interested bodies aimed at
producing a statement of ethical principles common across the social sciences.
The hope is that this document, expected in October, will inform improved ethics
oversight arrangements for the field.
Dingwall said over-regulation of research ethics led
social scientists to see it as a mere tick-box exercise. This created a danger
that once approval was received, their ethical sense was "turned off."
In his view, social science research should not
require prior ethics approval except in special cases. "If you are going to
interview adults, particularly about things that are a matter of public record
or where the risk of [psychological] damage is no greater than it would be if
somebody asked them a question at the bus stop, it shouldn’t be regulated."
InsideHigherEd, March 14, 2013.
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