{"id":49455,"date":"2019-09-18T05:05:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=49455"},"modified":"2019-09-18T05:05:12","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:05:12","slug":"research-ethics-committees-the-risk-of-a-bureaucracy-of-virtue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/research-ethics-committees-the-risk-of-a-bureaucracy-of-virtue\/","title":{"rendered":"Research: ethics committees, the risk of a “bureaucracy of virtue”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In recent years, ethics committees have been strengthened in the French research landscape.\u00a0Objective displayed by\u00a0these bodies<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0: ensure upstream that a study or experience will not harm the people who participate.<\/p>\n

In the Anglo-Saxon world, although these committees (or\u00a0Institutional Review Boards<\/em>\u00a0, IRB) have long been imposed in the humanities and social sciences (SHS), they raise a number of criticisms, including researchers favoring field investigations and other qualitative methods.<\/p>\n

It is therefore appropriate to question this trend: is it to increase the ethical vigilance of SHS researchers during their interventions?\u00a0Or can it hide some form of censorship?\u00a0Do we mimic the Anglo-Saxon practices resulting from biomedical research?\u00a0Or do we intend to preserve the institutions of costly lawsuits and reputational risks?\u00a0Ensuring access at the international level to certain partnerships or publications that have registered an ethics committee in their funding and \/ or acceptance procedures?<\/p>\n

Since 2016, prescriptions that are increasing in France – and feed the work of ethics committees – are generally guided by the most noble motives.\u00a0Who would not agree that a research should in no way harm the subjects observed or questioned, that it is frequently necessary to anonymize them, that it is scandalous to falsify results, to plagiarize or to reveal industrial secrets?\u00a0On the other hand, the way in which these principles are applied raises questions.<\/p>\n

Historical origins<\/h4>\n

In the 1960s,\u00a0three experiments<\/a>\u00a0(and their associated scandals) mark the beginning of ethical concerns in SHS.\u00a0The most famous are Milgram, on submission to authority, and that of Zimbardo, also called “Stanford”, based on a staged in a false prison (\u00a0strongly contested today<\/a>\u00a0).<\/p>\n

There was also the lesser-known work of Laud Humphreys who went secretly to observe homosexual encounters in public toilets … and lifted the number plates to be able to find the subjects and observe their “normal” life!<\/p>\n

These scandals will lead academic associations to produce codes of ethics, and institutions to form the first ethics committees, the famous Anglo-Saxon IRB.\u00a0Their generalization will give rise to a more general reflection published in 1979 in the\u00a0“Belmont Report”<\/a>\u00a0which establishes the now canonical principles of respect for the individual, beneficence towards the subjects and justice in the selection process.<\/p>\n

This report then lays the foundations of two key principles:<\/p>\n