Research Ethics
Research Ethics
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It is curious – curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. – Mark Twain In 1998, a medical journal called The Lancet published an article of interest to Human Service workers and the general public. It ended up having a global impact, and is still the subject of heated debate even after being completely discredited. The researchers claimed to have shown a statistical relationship between receiving the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the development of autism— suggesting furthermore that the vaccine might even cause autism. One result of this report was that many parents decided not to have their children vaccinated, which of course put them at higher risk for measles, mumps, and rubella. Research Ethics
However, follow-up studies by other researchers consistently failed to find a statistical relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism—and it is generally accepted now that there is no relationship. In addition, several more serious problems with the original research were uncovered. Among them were that the lead researcher stood to gain financially from his conclusions because he had patented a competing measles vaccine. He had also used biased methods to select and test his research participants and had used unapproved and medically unnecessary procedures on them. Research Ethics. In 2010 The Lancet retracted the article, and the lead researcher’s right to practice medicine was revoked (Burns, 2010). [1] Despite this, many parents still cling to a theory that has been completely discredited. In this chapter, we explore the ethics of scientific research. We begin with a general framework for thinking about the ethics of scientific research. We also need to consider the proliferation of false, and misleading, “news” items that are conveyed through social media and other avenues which for many people are serving instead of news which is curated, and fact checked. [1] Burns, J. F. (2010, May 24). British medical council bars doctor who linked vaccine to autism. The New York Times. Retrieved fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/health/policy/25autism.html?ref=andrew_wakefield 3.1 Moral Foundations of Ethical Research LEARNING OBJECTIVES Describe a simple framework for thinking about ethical issues regarding research. Give examples of several ethical issues that arise in research with human subjects —including ones that affect research participants, the scientific community, and society more generally. Ethics are the principles of right conduct and is an established field of philosophy. Morality is closely related, and sometimes used interchangeably with ethics, is generally considered to be more personal and subjective. We are concerned here with ethics as a set of principles and practices that provide principles for right conduct in a particular field. There is an ethics of business, medicine, teaching, human services practice, and of course, scientific research. As the opening example illustrates, many kinds of ethical issues can arise in scientific research, especially when it involves human participants. Research with human subjects is held to a higher standard although. The lives and wellbeing of people could be at stake. Not all forms of research with humans is benign or free from risk. For this reason, it is useful to begin with a general framework for thinking through these issues. A Framework for Thinking About Research Ethics Science does not happen in a social, political, or ethical vacuum. There are important issues to consider and the following principles (are adapted from those in the American Psychological Association [APA] RESEARCH FOR HUMAN SERVICES pg. 37 Ethics Code but are supported in all of the other social sciences.) provide a place to start when we consider the consequences of research. Moral Principles to Consider and Who Research Affects: Moral Principles to consider in research: 1. Weighing risk against benefits. 2. Acting responsibly and with integrity. 3. Seeking justice. 4. Respecting people’s rights and dignity. People who are affected in research: a Research participants b The scientific community c Society d The researchers themselves Ethical Principles Let us look more closely at each of the ethical principles and how they can be applied to each of the three groups. Weighing Risks Against Benefits Scientific research can be ethical only if its risks are outweighed by its benefits. Among the risks to research participants are that a treatment might fail to help or even be harmful, a procedure might result in physical or psychological harm, and their right to privacy might be violated. Among the potential benefits are receiving a helpful treatment, learning about the human condition, experiencing the satisfaction of contributing to scientific knowledge, and receiving money or course credit for participating. Scientific research can have risks and benefits to the scientific community and to society too (Rosenthal, 1994). [1] A risk to science is that if a research question is uninteresting or a study is poorly designed, then the time, money, and effort spent on that research could have been spent on more productive research. A risk to society is that research results could be misunderstood or misapplied with harmful consequences. The research that mistakenly linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism resulted in both of these kinds of harm. Of course, the benefits of scientific research to science and society are that it advances scientific knowledge and can contribute to the welfare of society. It is not necessarily easy to weigh the risks of research against its benefits because the risks and benefits may not be directly comparable. For example, it is common for the risks of a study to be primarily to the research participants but the benefits primarily for science or society. Consider, for example, Stanley Milgram’s original study on obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963). [2] The Milgram Study on Obedience In Milgram’s research, the participants were told that they were taking part in a study on the effects of punishment on learning and were instructed to give electric shocks to another participant each time that participant responded incorrectly on a learning task. With each incorrect response, the shock became stronger—eventually causing the other participant (who was in the next room) to protest, complain about his heart, scream in pain, and finally fall silent and stop responding. If the first participant hesitated or expressed concern, the researcher said that he must continue. In reality, the other participant was a confederate of the researcher—a helper who pretended to be a real participant—and the protests, complaints, and screams that the real participant heard were an audio recording that was activated when he flipped the switch to administer the “shocks.” The surprising result of this study was that most of the real participants continued to administer the shocks right through the confederate’s protests, complaints, and screams. Although this is considered one of the most important results in psychology—with implications for understanding events like the Holocaust or the mistreatment of prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib—it came at the cost of producing severe psychological stress in the research participants.
RESEARCH FOR HUMAN SERVICES pg. 38 Was It Worth It? Much of the debate over the ethics of Milgram’s obedience study concerns the question of whether the resulting scientific knowledge was worth the harm caused to the research participants. To get a better sense of the harm, consider Milgram’s (1963) [3] own description of it. In a large number of cases, the degree of tension reached extremes that are rarely seen in sociopsychological laboratory studies. Subjects were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan, and dig their fingernails into their flesh. Fourteen of the 40 subjects showed definite signs of nervous laughter and smiling. The laughter seemed entirely out of place, even bizarre. Full blown uncontrollable seizures [of laughter] were observed for three subjects. On one occasion, we observed a seizure so violently convulsive that it was necessary to call a halt to the experiment (p. 375). Milgram also noted that another observer reported that within 20 minutes one participant “was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching the point of nervous collapse” (p. 377) To Milgram’s credit, he went to great lengths to debrief his participants—including attempting to return their mental states to normal—and attempted to show that most of them thought the research was valuable and were glad to have participated. Still, this research would be considered unethical by today’s standards. Also, there is some evidence that the participants were still haunted by the experience years later. An excellent biographical drama, based on the Milgram experiment, is the Experimenter. Acting Responsibly and With Integrity Researchers must act responsibly and with integrity. This means carrying out their research in a thorough and competent manner, meeting their professional obligations, and being truthful.
