Research ethics

For those of you that monitor the AoIR discussion list, air-list, you will know that a dispute has been raging during the past week about ethical issues related to online studies. As in past debates about ethics on this list, the positions taken are often emotionally charged and can be distilled into two extreme camps: (1) those persons who feel every study (remotely) involving human subjects should and must be cleared by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the university involved and (2) those persons who feel much of the work of IRBs is detrimental to quality research and should be circumvented whenever possible. There are, of course, many positions between these extremes. One of the sub-threads of this discussion has revolved around whether and under what conditions it would be necessary to seek IRB approval to conduct research around avatars in virtual worlds like Second Life. Again, the positions ranged from 'yes, of course' to 'no, how silly'.

In the most recent post, a blog on IRBs was mentioned about which I was unfamiliar. The latest posting suggests that serious scholarly study is being conducted on this scientific practice, ethical review boards. Some of the most recent publications from this center are also illustrative of well-composed literature reviews…have a look….

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Maureen Fitzgerald's Ethics Project

Anthropologist and George Mason University alumna Maureen Fitzgerald, now affiliated with the University of Sydney, is the director of "An Analysis of Research Ethics and the Ethical Review Process as Culture and Cultural Process," an ongoing investigation more succinctly named "The Ethics Project."

Between 2001 and 2005 she and her associates observed the workings of 29 ethics committees in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States--not finding significant differences across national boundaries. They have published several papers based on this work, most of which are available on the project's website.