Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
- ethics committees/consultation
- policy guidelines/inst. review boards/review cttes.
- public policy
- regulation
- research ethics
What job should authorities give to review boards? We are grateful to Soren Holm, Rosamond Rhodes, Julian Savulescu and G Owen Schaefer for their thoughtful commentaries on our answer.1–4 Here we add to the discussion.
Let us summarise the claims for which we argued.5 Relevant authorities can task boards with review for consistency with duly established code (‘code-consistency review’ or ‘CCR’), thereby making code-consistent activities apt for approval and code-inconsistent activities apt for rejection. They can instead task boards with review for ethical acceptability (‘ethics-consistency review’ or ‘ECR’), making ethically acceptable activities apt for approval and ethically unacceptable activities apt for rejection. For every proposal a board might consider, these two different jobs establish different review bases, and their approvals and rejections also sometimes conflict. Some international and national statements require ECR, others instead require CCR, and others again seem either to require both or just to run the two together. Those responsible for these statements should make them clearer and better aligned here. For reasons of practicality, publicity and separation of powers, authorities do better to task boards with CCR and not ECR. These arguments also count against establishing any code with content that in effect collapses CCR into ECR. If our arguments withstand robust scrutiny, authorities should also remove ‘ethics’ and cognate terms from the names of these boards and their review activities and emphasise code expertise not ethics expertise in the required skill sets of boards.
Our article noted that ‘ethical considerations informed the genesis of these boards and express their aspirations’. Rhodes similarly notes: ‘the authors and endorsers of research ethics codes, declarations and regulations … (are) articulating the ethical standards for conducting human subject research’ and ‘This framework embeds the ethical parameters of human subject research into the moral missions of institutions’. Schaefer too …
Footnotes
Contributors AJM is the sole author for this commentary.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Not required.
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Collaborators Andrew Donnelly.
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright information:
Linked Articles
- Feature article
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
- Commentary
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- The job of ‘ ethics committees ’
- Code - consistent ethics review: defence of a hybrid account
- The structure of ethics review: expert ethics committees and the challenge of voluntary research euthanasia
- Reasonable disagreement and the justification of pre-emptive ethics governance in social research: a response to Hammersley
- Between universalism and relativism: a conceptual exploration of problems in formulating and applying international biomedical ethical guidelines
- Altruism in organ donation: an unnecessary requirement
- Review of a mock research protocol in functional neuroimaging by Canadian research ethics boards
- Contesting the science / ethics distinction in the review of clinical research
- Freedom and moral enhancement
- ‘ Serious ’ factor — a relevant starting point for further debate: a response