Ethical codes of practice for researchers can be traced back to one of the Nuremberg Trials, known as ‘The Doctors Trial’. This trial considered the actions of Karl Brandt,
Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, as well as a number of others involved in human experimentation for the Nazis throughout the Second World War. The extent of the experimentation was boundless, and often resulted in physical and psychological harm to the participants, or even death. The trial resulted in a 10-point code, the Nuremberg Code, being drawn up in order to protect participants in medical research.
The core components of this code still underlie many ethical codes of practice today, and included:
• Informed voluntary consent of the participant.
• The results should be ‘for the good of society, not random and unnecessary’.
• Research should be ‘conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury’.
• Participants should be allowed to terminate their involvement at any time.
• Researchers should terminate research if any ethical concerns arise.
Despite the development of the Nuremberg Code, unethical research on humans continued, and the 1960s saw a number of now infamous examples of unethical studies which resulted in public outcry. Between 1963 and 1966, children at Willowbrook School in New York were deliberately infected with hepatitis as part of a medical research programme. Parents who wished for their children to be admitted to the school, a specialist school offering support for mentally ill children, had to provide consent for them to take part in the study. In some cases parents were told that it was a vaccination programme and were unaware of the true nature of the research.
In an equally disturbing study, carried out in 1963, patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in New York were injected with live human cancer cells in an experiment to study the rejection of human transplants (Katz 1972). Patients were not informed of what was going on at the time, but the study contributed to growing concerns among elements of the medical profession regarding research and its effects on patients.
In 1964 the World Medical Association responded to these concerns by adopt- ing the Declaration of Helsinki. The ethical principles outlined by the declaration expanded upon those first proposed by the Nuremberg Code, but emphasised the importance of prioritising the research participants’ interests above those of wider society. The Declaration of Helsinki continues to be revised and updated, and, along with the founding principles of the Nuremberg Code, it has led to the devel- opment of a number of ethical guidelines which span disciplines to cover also non-medical research.
Despite the prevalence of ethical codes of practice nowadays, research continues to be carried out which can be criticised on the basis of its ethical principles (see the Milgram and Humphries studies later in this chapter). This leads us to the question of whether ethical codes can, and should, be enforced in order to protect the partic- ipants at all cost, or whether the pursuit of knowledge is a justifiable end whatever the means.
The case for ethical codes of practice
The ethical dilemma presented by social research has been recognised by a number of expert bodies who have sought to provide guidance for researchers with a view to preserving the integrity of their profession (see Example 4.1 for a guide to the major codes relevant to research in Britain). For example, the British Sociological Association (BSA) first adopted a Statement of Ethical Principlesin 1973. The BSA has since revised its guidance on a number of occasions, seeing it as organic rather than a set of fixed rules.
The issues that are dealt with by the BSA’s Statement of Ethical Principlescan be summarised around three general themes:
• The maintenance of professional integrity – researchers are encouraged to explain their work as fully as possible to all sponsors, facilitators, and research participants in ways that are likely to be meaningful to them.
• Protecting the interests of research participants – these are taken to include individuals and groups of all kinds. This is commonly manifested in a call for researchers to adhere to the doctrine of informed consent.
• Relations with sponsoring bodies, colleagues, employers, employees, and members of other professions – researchers are urged to reflect on the implications of their research given the organisation for which they may be working and the nature of the research itself. The intention here is to ensure that research remains inde- pendent when commissioned by an external body.
Example 4.1 Ethical codes of practice
The following ethical codes can be found at these Internet locations:
Market Research Society
<http://www.marketresearch.org.uk/>
Social Research Association
<http://www.the-sra.org.uk/ethics03.pdf>
British Psychological Society
<http://www.bps.org.uk/>
British Sociological Association
<http://www.britsoc.co.uk/>
Political Studies Association
<http://www.psa.ac.uk/>
Typically, ethical codes of practice attempt to lay down certain fundamental princi- ples governing the conduct of research within a particular professional setting.
The Social Research Association (SRA), whose statement of Ethical Guidelines seeks to inform the work of all social science researchers, says that its intention is to:
enable the social researcher’s individual ethical judgements and decisions to be informed by shared values and experience, rather than to be imposed by the profession ... They offer a framework within which the conscientious social researcher should, for the most part, be able to work comfortably. Where depar- tures from the framework of principles are contemplated, they should be the result of deliberation rather than of ignorance. (SRA 2003, p.10)
The SRA states clearly that it has no intention of establishing a set of ‘authoritarian or rigidly prescriptive’ regulations (SRA 2003, p.11). Rather, it sees it as its responsibility to assist those researchers who are struggling to come to grips with a series of diffi- cult decisions, and who are searching for reassurance in relation to certain key issues.
Arguments against the use of ethical codes
A number of arguments are, however, raised against the presence of ethical codes of practice. Douglas (1976) asserts that ethical codes are objectionable in principle in that they are used wrongly to protect the powerful in society against the weak.
Douglas maintains that a code of ethics assumes that there is an open society, when the reality is quite different in that powerful groups and organisations, such as gov- ernments and corporations, operate against the greater good under a shroud of secrecy. In these cases, Douglas argues that it is the job of researchers to expose cor- ruption and dishonesty. Rather, the existence of such codes encourages researchers to give their fullest attention to reaching an ethical research design, while restrict- ing themselves to innocuous topics that challenge nobody, and simply leave unequal power relations undisturbed. This is a view that is shared by researchers who adopt a critical perspective (see Chapter 2).
Allied to this is the criticism that ethical codes of practice stifle researchers’ cre- ativity and their ‘freedom of truth-seeking’ (Douglas 1976, p.31). For those who share Douglas’s commitment that social research should be a creative and cultured process, ethical codes of practice are viewed with the suspicion that they are an attempt at a blueprint or a ‘recipe book’ for ‘good’ research.
Some researchers also criticise codes of practice for being too general to be able to provide for practical application. For example, M. Punch (1998, p.168) argues that the generality of codes:
often does not help us to make the fine distinctions that arise at the interactional level in participant observation studies, where the reality of the field setting may feel far removed from the refinements of scholarly debate and ethical niceties.
Thus, for Punch, codes of practice are effectively unworkable in certain situations.
He quotes the situation that was faced by Powdermaker in the American Deep
South (Powdermaker 1966). In an entirely unanticipated event, Powdermaker suddenly came face to face with a lynch mob. What, Punch asks, was she supposed to do in this situation? Should she:
• Flash her identity card at the crowd and coolly outline her presence and then continue to observe events?
• Walk away from the situation?
• Seek out the victim and aid his escape?
• Try to talk the crowd out of their intentions?
• Inform the police in the hope that they would intervene?
Powdermaker agonised over the situation, having a sleepless night worrying about what to do. In the end, she did nothing and was very relieved when the man (who turned out to be entirely innocent) escaped from the clutches of the gang the fol- lowing day. In such situations making the ‘right’ decision is obviously very difficult – a decision that many researchers would be glad not to have to face.
While ethical codes of practice can be useful as guides, once engaged in the process of research the onus is placed on the individual researcher – it is the researcher’s duty to take responsibility for her or his own actions:
Ethics begins with you, the researcher. A researcher’s personal moral code is the strongest defence against unethical behaviour. (Neuman 2000, p.443)
Similarly, M. Punch (1998, p.171) concludes that a code of ethics can be:
beneficial as a guidelinethat alerts researchers to the ethical dimensions of their work, particularly priorto entry.