Topic
Research ethics research, explained
6 open-access research ethics studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- How do we know ethics committees work?
Countries pour resources into RECs, but quality assurance has been nearly silent on outcomes, so we may have processes without real protections for participants or communities.
- Do research rules restore trust?
Kerasidou argues that consent and ethics-committee rules make research more reliable, but restoring trust also requires trustworthiness and goodwill toward the vulnerable.
- How H3Africa consent forms explain genomics
Most H3Africa projects used broad consent, often because funders required data sharing, while forms explained genetics mainly through family inheritance.
- What makes risky early clinical trials worth doing?
The authors argue that 'social value' should refer only to the improvement a tested intervention is expected to bring to patients, and that trials of interventions lacking such value should not expose people to risk at all.
- Is it ethical to do HIV cure research on people who are dying?
The authors argue that dying people with HIV can ethically donate samples and their bodies to cure research that cannot help them, provided consent, altruism and vulnerability are handled with care.
- Can virtue ethics help brain researchers handle conflicts?
Researchers who put electrodes in human brains face tangled conflicts of interest that rules alone cannot resolve, so the authors argue for training ethical skills and judgment.