Researchers and research ethics: Between fears of the expansion of controversial practices and the strengthening of ethical awareness

Abstract

In 2015, the European Educational Research Association (EERA) initiated a study to examine education researchers’ experiences with and attitudes towards research ethics reviews. This paper is not a result of this study; nevertheless, it is related to it while critically reflecting upon the issue of research ethics reviews. It starts with an analysis of observations and comments provided by the interviewees in their questionnaire replies. In them, some key dilemmas can be identified, which have been discussed in various academic circles in recent decades. The main part of the paper is intended to review these discussions and to determine their relevance for the debate in the specific field of education research. In the conclusion, attention is drawn to a gradual shift from the sphere of legitimacy to the sphere of legality, resulting from the current attempts of regulating research ethics, while pointing to a potential conflict between the two key research principles, which are also key academic values: ethical conduct in research and academic freedom.

Introduction

The incentive for this paper is related to a survey-based study commissioned by the European Educational Research Association (EERA) in 2015 to examine education researchers’ experiences with and attitudes towards research ethics reviews. Preliminary findings were presented at the ECER conference in 2016, and more detailed reports from this study are the focus of other articles published in this issue of the EERJ. The author of this article was not a member of the research group that conducted the study, but he obtained insight into a part of the collected data (Raykov et al., 2016) and was invited to comment on the study.

The main focus of this paper is, therefore, to critically reflect upon the phenomenon of research ethics reviews, which are now also becoming an issue in the broader field of education research. The paper starts with an analysis of observations, dilemmas and comments provided by the interviewees in their questionnaire replies. In them, at least in a rough outline, key dilemmas can be identified, which have long been discussed in various academic circles. The main part of the article is intended to review some of these discussions and to determine their relevance for the ongoing and future debate in the specific field of education research. In the conclusion, attention is drawn to a gradual shift from the sphere of legitimacy to the sphere of legality, resulting from the current attempts of regulating research ethics, while pointing to a potential conflict between the two key research principles which are also the key academic values: ethical conduct in research and academic freedom.

Codes of research ethics are a very recent phenomenon (Sikes and Piper, 2010), although it is possible to hear the claims that this is a ‘millennial tradition’. Through many centuries, the Hippocratic oath has been viewed as a vow to defend the ethical standards of the medical profession. It is, however, not possible to overlook the semantic shifts that the general cultural and paradigmatic changes have left in the original text through its long history. Even the Declaration of Geneva (WMA, 2018) as ‘the modern Physician’s Pledge’, originally adopted in 1948, has been subject – within only 70 years – to a whole series of amendments that reflect the deep cultural and value changes of our era. Discussions on research ethics, both in specialized academic communities and in the wider public, cannot therefore be addressed beyond the ongoing social, cultural and value changes. However, the ongoing changes themselves are not yet an argument that could be used to defend any revision of social, academic or ethical norms. When dealing with contemporary issues such as research ethics, particular attention should be paid to the construction and coherence of the arguments.

Research ethics reviews are an even more recent phenomenon, but because of the limited space we will not deal with its genesis. In general, it seems that our time is marked by a serious concern for the ethical aspects of various professions, including researchers. When more and more attention is paid to the ethical aspects of their profession, the media more frequently report on ethically controversial academic practices. The academic profession lost a ‘coat of innocence’ that had seemed to exist, similar to that of clerics. It is therefore expected and even necessary for professional associations to be aware of the risks in this field. By addressing these issues, a fundamental concern should not only be devoted to the potential loss of reputation caused by the misconduct by a member of a professional community, or even a public scandal. It is necessary to understand what the term ‘ethical challenges’ is intended to mean, as well as to be aware of the consequences of insufficiently considered reactions to them.The EERA initiative to encourage systematic consultations on this issue within its national associations is therefore not a surprise, but it should not be overlooked that this is only the beginning of a rather long journey in a specific interdisciplinary research field, which has not yet been autonomously addressed.

The 2016 EERA survey respondents’ concerns regarding ethics reviews

The collected responses to the survey (Raykov et al., 2016) confirm that ethics review boards have been established in a clear majority of the respondents’ institutions, and they overwhelmingly agree that the review procedures – although sometimes ‘unclear’, ‘slow and time-consuming’ and ‘too bureaucratic’ – raise awareness about the ethical dimensions of research, which is apparently perceived as positive or very positive. This finding is not significantly different from some other comparative analytical views on ethics reviews (e.g. Sikes and Piper, 2010). In this paper, we do not engage with the details concerning review boards and their functioning at various institutions and in different countries; they are dealt with by some other articles in this issue.

It is evident that there is a considerable consensus about the importance of this instrument at the general level, while at the level of details various dilemmas and complaints appear and multiply. Only half the respondents believe that ethics reviews are ‘usually smooth and unproblematic’, and only about 10% of them ‘strongly agree’ with this statement. The attitude of researchers to the current system of ethics reviews seems ambivalent. This ambivalence is a sign of something that needs to be thoroughly reconsidered.

In the respondents’ views, efforts to develop and implement ethical codes and the activation of the review boards are necessary and deserve further encouragement. However, all this seems to be more a starting point for debates on issues in the background without which ethical reviews can become a sterile and purely ‘technical’ business. This is similar to the issue of quality: in a practical view, tools and procedures are necessary, even unavoidable, but if they are implemented in disregard to the issue of quality culture in the broad meaning, then these instruments only strengthen the bureaucracy. The adoption of rules and the establishment of boards is not a final solution to the problem. As some open responses indicate, it is part of the problem. Let us examine some details.

Among other questions, respondents were asked: Should ethics review boards be general (cross-disciplinary) or discipline specific? One of the respondents summarised the prevailing opinion by stating openly that:

discipline-specific ethics committees are the most appropriate. (Resp. 298)

Such a position is expected for an individual researcher from a specific research (sub)field. Not only in ethical reviews but in general there is a feeling of greater reliability when reviewers’ expertise is as close as possible to the specific (sub)area in which an individual performs research. However, what is discipline-specific in the case of educational research as an interdisciplinary field? We should not overlook the dangers of overly fragmented approaches that are sometimes hidden in such a preference; we should recognise the potentiality of ‘academic parochialism’ and, therefore, biased treatment. A conclusion derived from this is that we should seek a balance between the general and the specific: between what characterises a research field in general and what is specific to research in a particular (sub)field or (sub)discipline. It seems that, thus far, too little attention has been devoted to this issue in the interdisciplinary field of education research.

This issue tightens further if we look at it from another perspective – the perspective of differences in epistemologies and methodologies across disciplines and in academic culture in general. Tensions between various ‘academic tribes’ can have devastating effects when shifting from scholarly discussions into executive decision making. Research ethics obviously falls among those categories that can be in some details – the devil is always in the details – quite differently understood, differently interpreted from discipline to discipline, from one academic culture to another. Some respondents expressed these concerns very directly:

Ethical reviews are important but are often done by reviewers that work with educational research and from a positivist perspective. This influences the way the review process is conducted and impacts too heavily the outcome of the review. (Resp. 233)

I have worked in four universities over nearly thirty years and, in that time, have encountered some problems mainly as a result of top-down approaches that were first developed in the Life Sciences being imposed on Education and the Social Sciences. So essentially the problems arise as a result of a clash of cultures and often a very positivistic, arrogant, and insensitive set of dispositions and attitudes being dominant and having to be fiercely resisted (which can be fun also!). (Resp. 358)

Another respondent concluded as follows:

ethics reviews encourage a distorted conception of what ethics is and how it is a factor in human life more generally. A technicised [technical] conception of ethics is encouraged, and this can blind researchers to the broader ethical aspects of their work and lives. (Resp. 84)

Studies that reflect the dynamics of academia have shown that each discipline prides itself on its value and importance and that each of them (and more: each school of thought within a discipline) claims hegemonic status (e.g. Lloyd, 2009). This should be taken seriously, especially when it comes to making decisions that either enable or disable an individual research plan. In such cases, it is necessary to be aware of the pluralism of epistemologies and methodologies – not in the sense of laissez-faire, but in the sense of seeking contrary opinions, alternatives, etc. Especially in interdisciplinary fields, the recognition of academic multiculturalism is inevitable.

In contrast, in the survey, an opinion has also been expressed that ethics reviews do not concern all types of research:

I am doing mainly theoretical research … and the next questions do not apply to my research. (Resp. 102)

Could it really be argued that theoretical research does not require ethical reflection and reconsideration? The respondent probably had in mind the routine practice of some committees, which often focus exclusively on data collecting. The narrowing of the ethical focus can lead to what the above-quoted respondent called a ‘technicised conception of ethics’. Procedures for the collecting and processing of empirical data can be an extremely sensitive ethical theme, but the reduction of ethical dimensions of research only on data collecting would be a mistake. Ethical dimensions are inherent to each and every research plan, as well as to the implementation of its results.

The understanding that research ethics cannot be separated from broader issues regarding the roles of academic institutions and individual academics is present in the following particularly interesting comment:

The operation of the social sciences ethics committee on this campus has been so bureaucratic … More than once there has been a real interference with norms of academic freedom. (Resp. 96)

This comment concerns the very understanding of the basic categories on which the academic work is based. Another respondent asked openly:

I would be glad to receive a more detailed explanation about what has been understood under the notion ‘research ethics’ by the authors of this survey. (Resp. 98)

Perhaps the respondent was aiming just at a ‘technical definition’; nevertheless, this question indicates a broader and deeper one – how should research ethics be thought about at all? This is not an issue that can be solved once and for all, but a problem that researchers should face constantly. We return therefore to the question of why ethics reviews exist. It was formulated in a rather direct form, for example, with the following respondent:

the review should be about raising questions more than about applying isolated rules. Also, the processes should be throughout the research, not merely prior to starting, and the researcher and university should review the individual processes and overall procedures regularly. (Resp. 99)

It has already been said that respondents were, in general, sympathetic to ethical reviews, but it is not possible to overlook their ambivalence and dilemmas. The dilemmas are most likely individual and experience-based but they relate to a number of issues that have been disputed and thought out in a specialised scholarly discussion. Therefore, we want to upgrade their comments by connecting the identified dilemmas to this discussion and thus to place them in a broader perspective.

Academic profession, academic freedom and academic integrity

Research ethics is a form of professional ethics. Groups in possession of and practising highly specialised knowledge and skills have always been – in one way or another – aware of the power of (their) knowledge and its consequences; for example, in relation to those who do not have it (the lay public, etc.). Because an individual member could jeopardise the status and functioning of a given professional community, ethical codes were agreed to define standards of behaviour by all members of a given profession, and they normally also included modes of punishment if these standards were violated.

However, research ethics is a modern type of professional ethics, just as the research profession is a modern profession. The research profession is often equated with the academic profession, and this may cause some confusion: the term ‘researcher’ often has a narrower meaning (e.g. teaching is excluded), while the term ‘academic profession’ can have many meanings, not least because of its long history and diverse traditions.

George Shurr (1982) showed convincingly that the original, monastic profession was attached to ‘religious vows’ (p. 318) and therefore fundamentally differed from the modern understanding of the profession in terms of expertise and service. Even the academic profession, which grew out of this tradition, ‘was not first of all designed to serve the public interest. It had a more transcendent intent’ (p. 319). A fundamental change occurred in the modern era: ‘The old vow of devotion to the truth has been translated into devotion to a competence valued by society’ (p. 320). This shift has had far-reaching consequences, including the abandonment of (religious) vows and the emergence of (professional) codes (pp. 321–322):

All professions, not just academicians, are being asked to specify what it is that they contribute to society, and demonstrate that they are contributing it – not just satisfying their own interests. If this is not done by the members of the profession it will be imposed externally … In the process, the old, open-ended obligation to realize a value becomes codified in minimum standards of good practice. While the performance of a vow has no practical limits, a code explicitly delimits the responsibility and involvement of a professional. While certification of the fulfilment of a vow can be left to the conscience of those who made it, meeting the requirements of a code must be auditable by an independent party.

With modern times, however, there has been another significant shift: the invention of the ‘research’ university. Highly specialised knowledge and skills have been provided at higher education institutions for centuries, but not always in the same modes. The ‘classical’ university trained medical, theological, and legal professionals. As we can read in Kant’s essay on ‘the conflict of faculties’, this training was conducted at the ‘higher faculties’ (medicine, theology, law), whose ‘teachings interest[ed] the government itself’, while the ‘lower faculty’, whose function was only to look after ‘the interests of science’ and ‘may use its own judgment about what it teaches’, did not generate any profession in the modern sense but ‘scholars’, gelehrten Volks, literally ‘learned people’ (Kant, 1979: 25).

Since the 19th century, these first professions have been followed by many others; they all provide services to the public and prove their relevance to the society in one way or another. Even the ‘learned people’ who seemed to be ‘closed in ivory towers’ have gradually gained all main characteristics of a profession – the academic profession. In addition, academics have had either to prove themselves as ‘researchers’ or they occupy lower positions in the academic hierarchy.

The academic profession in the modern sense of the term began to form at the beginning of the 19th century. Rüegg (2004: 7) claimed that the ‘professionalization of university careers’ was the most important consequence of the process of the transformation of public universities into lay institutions: ‘professor became a civil servant of the lay and bureaucratic state’. However, the new profession that evolved from ‘learned people’ retained some special features. At this stage, it did not develop professional codes, but instead – in the post-Humboldtian period, especially from the 20^th century onward – declarations on academic freedom and/or institutional autonomy (‘may use its own judgment about what it teaches’).

One would seek in vain for a definition of either academic or research ethics in the writings of von Humboldt (1970 [1810]), although it has constantly been pointed out that he justified the so-called ‘research university’ and conceptually contributed to the subsequent exponential advancement of both fundamental and applied (or ‘useful’) knowledge. With the invention of the research university, i.e., the university which contributes to ‘nation building’, etc., the classical academic world began to lose its ‘peace and solitude’. Its ‘internal’ knowledge power made it a very interesting subject for ‘external’ world powers. The modern university – understood as the modernised system of ‘higher faculties’ and their ‘teachings’ – has gradually become the central interest not only of the government and politics but also of the private sector. In contrast, growing instrumentalism began to jeopardise the ‘lower faculty’ – and academic freedom at large. In specific historical constellations – in particular of the first half of the 20^th century – the defence of academic freedom and institutional autonomy became the central theme of the ‘learned people’, as for example in the following document drafted in the 1930s, at a time when Europe was drowning in totalitarian regimes, by American academia:

Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. (AAUP, 1940: 3)

However, this document also warned – but only marginally – that academic freedom ‘carries with it duties correlative with rights’ (p. 3). It was not until the 1970 Interpretive Comments (p. 5) that ‘particular relevance’ was attributed to the Statement on Professional Ethics (adopted in 1966). A similar conceptual process can be followed in post-WW2 Europe: the debate gradually turned to the relationship between academic freedom and academic responsibility. The following explanation of this relationship, developed by the European University Institute (established in 1976) can serve as a paradigmatic example of the trend:

Academic freedom is the freedom to teach, study and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations or public pressure … At the same time, integrity, accountability and responsibility in conducting academic research form the cornerstone of any academic enterprise and violations of widely-recognized academic research standards represent serious offences to the entire academic community … Academic integrity requires that academic research follows elevated professional standards, including appropriate research design and frameworks, adheres to high levels of research ethics and abides by the requirements set out by professional and regulatory research guidance and research ethics frameworks issued in appropriate areas. (EUI, 2013: 7)

At this point, we could proceed with the specific treatment of this issue in the emerging European Research Area, but due to the space limitations, we move on to another, crucial issue.

Research reviews in response to moral panic in the ‘risk society’?

Today, we are witnessing new shifts in the relationship between the (research) university and society at large. In the general public, a lot of attention is devoted to institutional autonomy (most often understood as corporate autonomy), as well as academic integrity and research ethics, but not to the issue of academic freedom. While this topic is being discussed very intensively in some academic circles (in particular in the ‘lower faculty’), a new discourse is clearly emerging in the ‘post-truth’ world. In public opinion, academic freedom is perceived even as a questionable privilege and, in the age of populism, academic dishonesty is becoming an increasingly publicised problem. Michael Ignatieff, president of the Central European University in Budapest, which has been under severe pressure from Viktor Orban’s government since 2017, describes this trend with the following words:

Outside of university seminar rooms, research labs, and libraries, many people regard academic freedom as a privilege – and a dubious one at that … If you ask people on the street what academic freedom means, some will say: it means professors have a job for life and no risk of being fired. In a world of pervasive economic insecurity, sinecures for the few look hard to justify … Aversion to ‘expertise’ and rejection of ‘establishment’ authorities is a central element in the politics of populism. (Ignatieff, 2017)

This trend can be associated with the increasing importance of security in ‘the world risk society’ (Beck, 2006) as well as with the seemingly non-problematic state of freedom in the ‘free choice’ societies (Reith, 2004). Public opinion generally responds to an increased risk with requirements for tighter regulation and restriction of freedom. All this, inter alia, raises a question: ‘Can academic autonomy survive in the knowledge society?’ (Bennich-Björkman, 2007; Henkel, 2006). This is a question that contributes to establishing the context to the issues of research ethics; we will touch upon it later. What is important here is that the tightening of ethical and other rules has often been a result of the state of a moral panic in society.

The calls for (more) stringent or detailed codes of research ethics can be understood as a specific product of a moral panic; for example, public scandals that erupt in connection with various types of academic dishonesty, both among staff as among students, typically require tightening legal and ethical rules at affected institutions. However, when searching the archives for the first codes of research ethics, as a rule, we always come to the Nuremberg Trials (1945–1946). The post-war disclosure and confrontation with the horrific medical experimentation in Nazi camps indirectly resulted in the development of the first code of ethics – the Nuremberg Code – targeting medical research as a risky professional activity. It is risky because it is not possible without involving ‘trial subjects’ or ‘research participants’ in today’s politically correct language. It was recognised, therefore, that it is necessary to ensure adequate protection of human subjects in research by both legal and moral means. The Code (2014 [1946]: 1) begins with the sentence:

The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

Its ten points are therefore not primarily a result of critical reflection and discussion within a profession by ‘learned people’; they were initiated from outside. They are a result of a specific moral panic: the after-war shock accompanied by, inter alia, doubts about the claim that humanism is inherent to ‘science’. The discovery that the emperor is naked did not stop at this point; critical debate on a series of other scientific experiments in the US led to another paradigmatic document, in which the current understanding of research ethics likely started. This is The Belmont Report (1979), prepared by the US National Commission for Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and includes the Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. The following basic principles are listed in the document: respect for persons (individuals treated as autonomous agents, entitled to protection), beneficence (as an obligation) and justice (in the sense of fairness in distribution).

From this point, the trend began to spread in a disciplinary (e.g. from medicine and life sciences to the social sciences and humanities) as well as geographical direction (e.g. from the US to Europe). It has been increasingly intense since 2000 onwards. It seems as though the various agents – single disciplines and research associations, higher education institutions, and national bodies, even transnational organisations – compete in the setting of principles and rules of desirable and expected behaviour of researchers. In contrast, media increasingly report cases of research and academic dishonesty. In general, trust in the academic world is coming under question and ‘universities have become isolated from their publics’:

Higher education has historically had a close relation with the city and country of its founding, but, today, its institutions are considered part of the elite, with campuses viewed as islands of affluence amid ‘seas of squalor, violence and despair’. (Hazelkorn, 2017)

Whom do universities and research serve today? In fact, there are reasons for moral panic. In the knowledge society/economy – which has been gradually recognised not as a promise of a ‘better world’ but as the ‘risk society’ (Beck, 2006) – research and the academic profession, in general, is turning into a risky business. Declining public funding for research and teaching must be compensated by generating financial resources ‘on the market’. Of course, the responding institutional changes have ‘a determinate impact on the behaviour of academics’ (Bennich-Björkman, 2007: 334). All this results in the growing instrumentalisation of knowledge. Means are becoming more important than goals. The market requires competitiveness, cost cuts, immediate ‘responding to our customers’ needs’, etc. If a ‘useful abuse’ is practised in the corporate sector, why not also in the modernised academic sector? Publish or perish? Let’s cheat!

Theoretical justification of ethical research reviews

Cheating is the tip of the iceberg. It is rooted in deeper processes that generate both contemporary transformations of the academic world and the mentioned moral panic. It needs to be addressed by appropriate means and institutional procedures; however, the question of the very occurrence of and spreading misbehaviour is a much wider problem. In addition to sociological and psychological aspects, philosophical ones are no less important, especially the theoretical argumentation and justification of thus far known practices of ethical research reviews. Even this is subject to extensive debate, but not very often connected to the ongoing ‘practical’ dimension of and decisions on ethical reviews.

On this horizon, almost twenty years ago, Howe and Moses (1999) drew attention to the conceptual problem of one of the foundational elements of Western moral-political thought: protection of individual autonomy as the cornerstone for the concept of respect for persons. According to them, the traditional controversy about autonomy has been cast in terms of Kantian versus utilitarian ethical frameworks. This is indeed contradictory. In the utilitarian derivation, Kant’s ethical principle always treat persons as ends ‘is subject to the [utilitarian] condition “if this maximises benefits”. In this framework, autonomy is instrumental’ (p. 22). What follows from this? If the harm done to research participants in the short term is outweighed by the long-term benefit of the knowledge produced, then individuals do not need to be treated as autonomous agents. Even if the utilitarian theory rejected – and condemned – such a direct potential conclusion (e.g. by the so-called rule utilitarianism argument), this contradiction should be kept in mind when critically reflecting on the principles that should guide our moral decisions in practice. Reconsideration of the principles seems to be more important than the approved and accepted formal codes. Legitimacy comes before legality. ‘If inflicting moral harm is something that social research ought to avoid, the justification for doing so has to be sought beyond utilitarian benefits-calculations’, they conclude (p. 23).

We saw above that some of the respondents in the 2016 survey warned of the dominant positivist discourse in today’s research reviews. In this respect, another issue arises that is not related primarily to ethics but to epistemology. The trend in which ethics reviews are being reduced to the problem of protection of persons in the collecting, processing and storage of data is closely linked to the prevailing but not at all unproblematic understanding of what is meant by terms such as ‘research’, ‘science’, ‘academic behaviour’, etc. In this context, the recent discussion has rightly pointed out that issues of research ethics also need to be considered along with the methodological and epistemological distinction between quantitative and qualitative research strategies (Adams St Pierre, 2006). The ‘epistemological shift in the mid- and late 20th century away from positivism and towards hermeneutics’ have strong ‘implications … in social research ethics’ (Howe and Moses, 1999: 32).

The dichotomy of Kantian and utilitarian ethics is two centuries old. In recent decades, several new ‘fundamental perspectives’ have been developed, which Howe and Moses deal with in their article and which are linked ‘with a move away from positivism’. We cannot enter into detail but just briefly review one of them. This is Noddings’ theory of care (1984), which is about educational ethics in general but also has important implications regarding educational research ethics. According to her, educational research should be for teaching and not simply on teaching. The researcher is not a ‘neutral positivist’ observing the life of children, teachers and parents from clouds above. In this ‘empathy-based’ theoretical perspective, the spontaneous care for the other is understood as a sufficient support for our behaviours. General principles are superfluous. All these are undoubtedly strong accents that shift the discussion from general principles to the actual process of moral decisions in our daily lives and, therefore, ‘[i]gnoring these concerns renders the traditional emphasis on autonomy and privacy incomplete at best’ (Howe and Moses, 1999: 34).

Nevertheless, this may also have some questionable consequences. If not only the relationship between a teacher and a pupil but also the relationship between a researcher and a research participant (a pupil, teacher, parent) ‘ought to exemplify caring’ and ‘to contribute to school communities’, then research ‘should not be conducted on the basis of mere intellectual curiosity’ (Howe and Moses, 1999: 34). However, without a coherent conceptual framework, ‘care’ can be a completely arbitrary category. In the ongoing discussion, it has been recently argued that the claim that general ethical principles are superfluous has a potential problematic consequence (although such a consequence would be actually rejected or condemned ‘in practice’): ‘education derived only from natural, “spontaneous” care, without awareness of and reflection on the specific rules, norms, and values from which it derives, can lead to education that forms, for instance, a racist subject’: ‘reflection on the basis of principles (universalised assertions) is a necessary, indispensable part of human discourse’ (Krek and Zabel, 2017: 286).

One of the authors who discusses the potential contribution of philosophy to the ethics of educational research asked another uneasy question: ‘Of all disciplines, philosophy is most marked by perennial differences, such as those between various schools of moral theory … How is that diversity to be dealt with in a code of ethics?’ (Small, 2001: 393) The question is truly embarrassing. Either we must decide for one of the schools of thought and thus risk falling into arbitrariness, or we are losing ourselves in a long range of ‘fundamental perspectives’ from which a way out can be found only by taking another arbitrary decision. ‘Codes of ethics present a temptation to institutionalise one philosophical approach to ethics’ (p. 388), Small warns us.

At a glance, it may look as though such and similar considerations lead to a complete relativisation of the efforts of ethics reviews. However, this is not the case. The embarrassing question is simply a radical insight into how broad and deep the questions that we discuss here are. Small derives his argument as follows (p. 403):

The insistence of many moral philosophies on basic principles is, in fact, a parallel to the epistemology which looked for secure foundations on which empirical knowledge could be based … Hence, just as a philosophical approach can contribute to research by pointing out the need to move beyond a positivist methodology, so too it can draw attention to the implausibility of the traditional intuitionism whose foundational apparatus seemed to provide a code of research ethics in ready-made form. In both cases the alternative is not skepticism or relativism but, on the contrary, a reaffirmation of objectivity in a form more adequate to meeting some strong challenges.

To refresh ongoing polemics, it is sometimes expedient to return to the discussions that are now virtually forgotten but were launched at the sources of the disputed topic. Around the time The Belmont Report was published, an American philosopher in the field of biomedical ethics, Daniel Callahan, reflected on a growing belief ‘that an academic code is now needed’. However, his standpoint was quite critical: ‘such calls normally seem to arise when a profession, field, or discipline is in an internal state of disarray … is a code of ethics the way to deal with the moral problems of academic life? My answer to that question is no’ (Callahan, 1982: 336, 341).

Callahan states two reasons for his position: first, he says, this is not to say that such codes have been altogether useless, but it is to say that, at best, they only serve to help formulate and make public some ideals of the professions; and that, at worst, they provide a shield behind which practitioners can hide, meanwhile doing business as usual. Second, it is extraordinarily difficult to imagine how an acceptable and adequate code could be developed (as we saw above). With his strong reservation against codes of ethics, however, he does not seduce us into relativism but offers an alternative to a code (p. 343):

It would be that every college and university in this country, and every professional organization concerned with academic life, devote a significant period of time every two years or so to examining questions of academic ethics. In universities and colleges, the whole community should be invited to take part: debates should be organized, general principles organized for argument, and criticisms of wrong or doubtful practices pursued. Occasions of that kind would be helpful not only in bringing ethical problems to the surface, and allowing them to be debated in a public forum, but one great advantage of discussions of ethics is that they force people back to other basics as well. What is the purpose of the university? What are scholars and researchers trying to do? What should students be looking for in their education? What should the public expect of universities?

It follows that ‘an alternative to reliance on a code of ethics is to place more emphasis on procedures and strategies for making ethical decisions, especially by groups such as committees’, to ‘looking more closely at how ethical decisions are actually made’, to ‘provide guidance for moral learning’ (Small, 2001: 403). Yes, we need moral learning more than moral teaching.

It follows, inter alia, that the subject at which research ethics should aim cannot be constructed in a negative way: a delinquent individual, a ‘delinquent researcher’. In this way, the field of law would invade the field of ethics; in consequence, it should be recognised that a ‘code of ethics would be totally insufficient to deal with those problems’ (Callahan, 1982: 344). Of course, academic delinquency of any kind must be identified, investigated and sanctioned, but these issues correspond much better to criminal law, etc. The problem that we encounter here is different:

A great deal of emphasis has been placed in the literature of research ethics on respecting the autonomy and integrity of those being researched, for example in upholding the principle of informed consent. Do we not need to give similar attention to the case of researchers? (Hammersley, 2009: 217)

Research ethics should not surrender to instrumental reason and should not become ‘useful’. It should, above all, provide an open space for a continuous discussion that legitimises the conditions for the consequent establishment of the rules and their practical application. It should aim at a researcher: specifically, a ‘normal’ researcher.

Conclusion: ethics reviews between a discourse of security and a discourse of freedom?

The present trend in ethics reviews indicates that an increasing weight has been attributed to formal rules and procedures; it is increasingly difficult to discern the difference between institutional codes of ethics and institutional legal regulations. The key problem seems to have been shifted from the sphere of legitimacy to the sphere of legality. ‘Many ethics review policies and procedures are potentially measures of governance and regulation’ (Sikes and Piper, 2010: 211) and not a support to reflecting one’s own research – ongoing research, not just a research proposal – in an ethical lens. Moreover, it seems that we have been caught in a paradox: ‘few, if any, researchers set out with a deliberate intention to bring about harm’ (p. 211). Nevertheless, severe measures have been taken almost at all institutions in order to prevent any, even the smallest potential ‘ethical sin’ of their researchers. In ‘a fear of litigation’ (Hammersley, 2009: 218; Tierney and Blumberg, 2007: 396), the reputation of an institution must be preserved, not an individual researcher. Ethical codes are designed predominantly negatively: as a means of preventing harm and providing security, ‘ethical security’ in the ‘risk society’. This occurs at the expense of neglecting freedom. Obviously, academic freedom and the protection of human research subjects can be ‘mutually exclusive’ (p. 388).

Formalising the rules of ethical behaviour of researchers can turn against the good intentions of their authors, if and when the space that should encourage and protect constant dialogue is turned into a closed space. The dichotomy of the legitimate and the legal is also true in the field of research ethics. The dominance of the legal over the legitimate forces researchers into a mode of conformism. ‘Long-term … development of knowledge, nonconformity and originality are some of the values’ (Bennich-Björkman, 2007: 335) that need to be protected even when we are faced with a moral panic and demands for tighter rules. Last but not least, research ethics cannot be a means of limiting knowledge, but should encourage its responsible broadening and progression. Obviously, we have a lot of work ahead of us.