Article Text
Abstract
What should authorities establish as the job of ethics committees and review boards? Two answers are: (1) review of proposals for consistency with the duly established and applicable code and (2) review of proposals for ethical acceptability. The present paper argues that these two jobs come apart in principle and in practice. On grounds of practicality, publicity and separation of powers, it argues that the relevant authorities do better to establish code-consistency review and not ethics-consistency review. It also rebuts bad code and independence arguments for the opposite view. It then argues that authorities at present variously specify both code-consistency and ethics-consistency jobs, but most are also unclear on this issue. The paper then argues that they should reform the job of review boards and ethics committees, by clearly establishing code-consistency review and disestablishing ethics-consistency review, and through related reform of the basic orientation, focus, name, and expertise profile of these bodies and their actions.
- Ethics Committees/Consultation
- Applied and Professional Ethics
- Codes of/Position Statements on Professional Ethics
- Policy Guidelines/Inst. Review Boards/Review Cttes.
- Research Ethics
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Linked Articles
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
Other content recommended for you
- Code-consistent ethics review: defence of a hybrid account
- The ‘ethics committee’ job is administrative: a response to commentaries
- Problems and development strategies for research ethics committees in China’s higher education institutions
- Nature and governance of veterinary clinical research conducted in the UK
- Human infection challenge studies in endemic settings and/or low-income and middle-income countries: key points of ethical consensus and controversy
- Research bureaucracy in the United Kingdom: Seeking a balance: response from the Department of Health and COREC
- Proportional ethical review and the identification of ethical issues
- Contesting the science/ethics distinction in the review of clinical research
- Introducing patient and public involvement practices to healthcare research in Austria: strategies to promote change at multiple levels
- The ESRC research ethics framework and research ethics review at UK universities: rebuilding the Tower of Babel REC by REC