Research Ethics Conferece

The University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development is organizing a conference on the Ethics and Politics of Research with Immigrant Populations. See the link for more information.

Anthropology and Ethics Update

The most recent edition of Anthropology News features articles on codifying ethics. Much here is of relevance to linguists (and the LSA is mentioned a few times in the articles). The articles are available online and comments can be made via the AAA blog.

Blog searches

Periodically I’ll do a review of the search terms people are using to find this blog.

Currently, the search terms are clustered in two areas: the LSA ethics statement itself, and ethical case studies. For the first, you’ve come to the right place! For the second, we’re aiming to include more case studies over the coming year.

Research Monitoring

Someone recently sent me a link to the Australian Indigenous Law Reporter’s 2003 Guidelines for Indigenous Research. These are not IRB guidelines; they have no legislative power (as far as I know), they apply to research done through the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (note that research project here has no technical definition).

The first paragraph is striking:

It is ethical practice in any research on Indigenous issues to include consultation with people who may be directly affected by the research or research outcomes whether or not the research involves fieldwork.

This would seem to imply that if I go to my local library and use published materials to write a paper on some aspect of Indigenous languages, I would need to obtain the permission of those groups (who? the person who talked to the original researcher and their family? the community council? the Land Council?) in order to publish it.

Section 7 contains the following guideline:

Research on Indigenous issues should also incorporate Indigenous perspectives and this is often most effectively achieved by facilitating more direct involvement in the research.

Does this imply that research which may be contradictory to “Indigenous perspectives” is inethical? For example, is research in Australian prehistory inethical, since a hypothesis of mid-Holocene expansion of Indigenous groups in Australia is in contradiction to traditional belief systems which either place people on the land since the beginning of time or have languages placed there by culture heroes? How does one sensitively and appropriately incorporate perspectives which are based on an incompatible set of assumptions? (At some level this guideline seems to me to be not all that different from requiring research on evolution to incorporate perspectives on creationism.)

Finally, these guidelines appear internally contradictory by simultaneously requiring recognition of individual differences while (in several different sections) demanding public acknowledgement of participants. They demand consensus, negotiation and inclusion of indigenous participants as researchers while at the same time requiring research participants to defer at all times to an undefined group of people. That also seems to be contradictory.

The intent of the guidelines is clear; the guidelines seem to guard against the type of exploitative, generalistic and unethical research which indigenous people (particularly in Australia) are justifiably angry about and eager to prevent. Does a set of guidelines like this achieve that?

IRB Spotlight: Does collecting grammatical judgments require IRB review?

I received a question from a researcher this week asking whether or not eliciting grammatical judgments for syntactic research required IRB review. IRB review is only required for projects that are “research” (which this collecting elicitations is) and that include “human subjects’ defined in U.S. federal research regulations. Here is the definition of human subject:

“45CFR46.102 (f) Human subject means a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research obtains

(1) Data through intervention or interaction with the individual, or
(2) Identifiable private information.

Intervention includes both physical procedures by which data are gathered (for example, venipuncture) and manipulations of the subject or the subject’s environment that are performed for research purposes. Interaction includes communication or interpersonal contact between investigator and subject. Private information includes information about behavior that occurs in a context in which an individual can reasonably expect that no observation or recording is taking place, and information which has been provided for specific purposes by an individual and which the individual can reasonably expect will not be made public (for example, a medical record). Private information must be individually identifiable (i.e., the identity of the subject is or may readily be ascertained by the investigator or associated with the information) in order for obtaining the information to constitute research involving human subjects.”

Based on this, would you conclude that eliciting grammatical judgments constitutes “human subjects” research? If no, how would you convince your IRB that this type of research does not need review? And then, how about collecting speech samples for phonetic analysis?

Human Subjects on Facebook

Philip Rubin of Haskins Labs has set up a Facebook group for all aspects of working with human subjects in the behavioral, cognitive, and social sciences.

NSF: Request for feedback

From the AAAS policy alert, March 4, 2009:

NSF Invites Comments on Ethics Education Requirements. The National Science Foundation has issued a request for public comment on its plans to incorporate education on the responsible and ethical conduct of research into its grant-making process. This initiative is in response to a provision in the America COMPETES Act (2007) that requires institutions to provide such training for students and postdocs. Effective October 1, 2009, NSF will require proposals to certify that the institution has a plan to provide such training and oversight. While training plans are not required to be included in proposals, they will be subject to review upon request. Comments on NSF’s plans and related matters are due by March 31. NIH has long had a similar but less far-reaching requirement in place.

Suggestions

Please add any suggestions for discussion topics, case studies, or other queries as comments to this page.