Week 4, Research ethics.
Lecture notes
This week we talk about ethics in research. We will address several key issues:
- What can researchers do to get data?
- How the risk of harm get's weighed against the value of scientific data.
- How we tell simple research error from fraud.
- How research participants can give informed consent.
- What are / should be the benefits of research to participants & to the larger society?
- Who is the researcher responsible to ... How do we separate self-interest & political pressure from science?
We will talk about the Tuskegee study, a 40 year study of syphilis in rural Alabama that led to over 400 poor, largely uneducated African-American men being left untreated. Tuskegee is the basis for some of our human subjects protections, and remains the most salient example of unethical research in the United States. Winkopedia has a nice overview of the study here.
I will introduce the American Psychological Association rules for informed consent and IRB approval: you will all be including an informed consent document in your paper!
Lecture notes are here.
Readings
Chapter 14 and three readings: 1. scientific
error and politics, 2. ethics
of clinical trials, and 3. clinical
research in developing countries.
In 1999, human research was suspended at UIC due to inadequate Institutional Review Board (IRB) process. UIC has finally fully recovered form that problem, and many of our IRB and ethical review processes have been adopted to resolve the serious problems identified then: Read all about it here.
Discussion groups next week: Discussion sections will meet in 1076 BSB during week 5 (2/13). 1076 is one of the "fishbowl" rooms on the first floor in the psychology department.
We will search online for articles on your paper topic, so narrow down your topic PRIOR to this meeting. E-mail me or your TA if you have questions about appropriate paper topics.
Discussion group Assignment
(Click for a Word copy of Week 4 assignment).
Research ethics
You have three readings this week on research ethics. scientific error and politics concerns the nature of scientific error, and the politics of scientific fraud. Readings on the ethics of clinical trials and clinical research in developing countries concern the rights of research participants. You will discuss these and other ethical issues in discussion group this week. To facilitate that discussion, answer the following questions using not more than one typed page.
Reading 1: how would you prevent the situation that occurred with Dr. Baltimore? What aspects of the research process make congressional or other government intervention unnecessary (Hint: see editorial by S.J. Gould, lecture notes). What do you think the role of government should be in monitoring science?.
Reading 2: How would you personally balance the scientific versus ethical issues in giving research subjects information about their health status in a blinded, controlled intervention study? Was there a way that the informed consent process might have made this research have been more ethical?
Reading 3: Is using a placebo - control research design in treatment trials in developing countries an example of a Tuskegee-like study? Why or why not? How do you balance the ethnic and scientific issues in this research? Hint: ethics not only concern potential harm to study participants, but the extent to which valid data will answer important questions that directly affect the target population.
