Caroline Glendinning’s answer does not engage with any of the main
objections.
1. The principles stated are /inadequate as guidelines./ There has been
no attempt to identify in what circumstances they might be applied.
2. There has been an /academic failure/. Progress in academic depends on
dialogue. The consultation, as Caroline notes, raised many different
points of view; the published guidelines do not. The drafters have
referred neither to the arguments raised nor to the literature that was
cited in discussion, including different codes.
3. The working group has not fulfilled its brief. /The guidelines are
not about Social Policy./ There are mainly taken instead from the
Nuremberg Rules, as reflected in medical research, and some sociological
codes.
4. There has been /a failure of process/. The SPA has passed the
document through without correcting even the howlers, like anonymity
regardless of status (which would make it illegitimate to say e.g. that
“David Freud has advised the government on welfare reform”) or the idea
that all research material is confidential (if taken literally, that
would mean that citation of published sources is unethical).
There are certainly different perspectives on ethical conduct in
research, but that is not what has excited so much concern. The SPA
committee seems not to understand what adopting “guidelines” actually
means in practice. See e.g. M Hammersley, 2006, Are ethical committees
ethical? , Qualitative Researcher, Issue 2, pp 4-8, at
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/qualiti/QualitativeResearcher/QR_Issue2_06.pdf
. The guidelines are recklessly misconceived, and saying that they do
not need to be taken as rules is no defence.
Paul Spicker
Caroline Glendinning wrote:
> The postings on this list in response to the publication of the SPA's
> Guidelines on Research Ethics illustrate well the highly contested
> nature of this issue. The consultation on this topic last summer in
> response to the draft Guidelines also reflected the widely differing
> perspectives of social policy researchers and the wide range of
> different approaches to the definition and conduct of research.
>
> Given this diversity, the SPA has produced Guidelines, not a
> prescriptive statement. Of course there will be disagreements with
> these, and we hope that debate on the nature of research, its
> philosophical foundations and the multiple power relationships
> involved will continue on this list.
>
> In practice of course, much research will undergo scrutiny by
> University, NHS or other research ethics committees; SPA's Guidelines
> are no substitute for these formal processes.
>
> Caroline Glendinning
> SPA Chair
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