Research Ethics Review

Abstract

Across most jurisdictions today, researchers who propose to involve humans must first submit an application form to one or several committees of experts, who then assess the ethics of the proposed research. As a result of central role in determining the bounds of ethical research, Research Ethics Committees have been subject to sustained scrutiny. The cumulative charge is that research ethics review by committees promotes a wicked combination of inexpert review, inconsistent opinions, duplicative work, mission creep and heavy-handed regulation of health research. This chapter places this charge at the focal point. In what follows, I chart the process of research ethics review with a view towards arguing that RECs have become regulatory entities in their own right and very much are a form of social control of science. As I detail, while RECs are far from perfect in terms of regulatory design and performance, they do perform, at least in principle, a valuable role in helping to steward research projects towards an ethical endpoint. This chapter also offers a critique of existing work and suggests some future directions for both the regulatory design of research ethics review and also researching the field itself.