Research Agenda

Abstract

This issue of JERHRE focuses on two topics that have been largely ignored—trust in the human research industry and structural factors that affect the efficacy of ethical review of human research (i.e., factors that are not under the control of ethics committee members, such as the funding of committee resources and the provision of clear workable regulations). Trust and an adequate ethical infrastructure are integral to one another. Ethical capacity does not reside with an ethics committee alone, but springs from four foundations of ethical research. It derives from (a) national bodies that regulate research and clarify the ethical principles that are promulgated, (b) the institutional research administrations that finance and build the needed infrastructure, (c) the ethics committees that struggle to operate within this system, and (d) the individual disciplines and departments that should work collaboratively with investigators and ethics committees to provide needed expertise. Research on trust and adequate ethical review needs to be mindful of the larger dynamic system within which ethical oversight occurs, and how failure of any of its four major components weakens its other components.