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Social science research studying people—sometimes called “human subjects”—has grappled with how to ensure ethical research practice. Arguably universally, social science scholars have adopted the same ethical principles established to guide ethical practice in biomedical research: respect for persons, justice, and beneficence.
Increasingly, these principles are applied through the practice of prospective review by a committee, typically called an “Institutional Review Board” (IRB) or “Research Ethics Committee” (REC). Over the past several decades, these institutional forms and their associated regulations have spread around the world.
Despite this increasingly coherent institutional practice, research ethics in the social sciences still lacks any substantive core. This means that scholars may hold fundamentally irreconcilable views as to what constitutes ethical practice that our existing ethical principles cannot resolve. These issues are further pronounced for research that occurs across borders and on politically sensitive subjects.
Focusing on the principle of beneficence, Rebecca Tapscott will examines several ethical “scandals” in the social sciences as key moments when scholars articulate and justify ethical principles within their scholarly community. Examining these debates reveals that the principle of beneficence is fundamentally indeterminate, such that there is no stable basis upon which to determine whether research achieves principled ethical aspiration. Instead, in the face of an empty principle, scholars continue to rely on background principles, norms and processes to litigate ethics.
Rebecca Tapscott, Ambizione Research Fellow, Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy
Dr Rebecca Tapscott is an Ambizione Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva and concurrently a Visiting Fellow at London School of Economics' Centre on Africa and Edinburgh's Political and International Relations Department. In addition to her research on political violence, authoritarianism, and masculinity in low-capacity states, she is PI of a 4-year SNF project on research ethics governance in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Her research has appeared in Perspectives on Politics and International Affairs, and she is the author of Arbitrary States: Social control and modern authoritarianism in Museveni's Uganda.
Daniel Ricardo Quiroga-Villamarín, Ph.D. Candidate in International Law, Graduate Institute.
Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, Professor, International Relations/Political Science and Director of the Global Governance Centre, the Graduate Institute
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