• Question: how do you experiment on people with out going against their human rights?

    Asked by Shazzer to Adrian, Iroise, Joe, Rachel, Ria on 8 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Iroise Dumontheil

      Iroise Dumontheil answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      There are systems in place to make sure that we do not force people to do things they do not want to do.
      When we want to do a study with human participants, we have to write an application to do this study and submit it to a Research Ethics Committee, which is often composed of a mixture of researchers and non-researchers.
      As part of our application we have to explain how our participants will be recruited, how we are going to advertise our study, what they will have to do, whether they will receive money for it or some other compensation. We also have to show the information sheet that we will provide to participants, which describes the study, and typically explains to participants that they can stop taking part at any time, that their data will be anonymised. Finally we have to show the consent form that we will use and that participant will sign to agree to take part in the study, once they have read the information sheet.
      Then the ethics committee gives approval, or they may suggest some clarification, and we can go ahead and run the study.

      It gets tricky with certain population of participants when it is not clear whether they can give “informed consent”. So for example for children, we get the approval from their parents (a parent has to sign a consent form) and we may have a different, simpler, information sheet for them to read, and we ask them whether they agree to take part, and we always tell them they can stop at any time.

    • Photo: Adrian Chu

      Adrian Chu answered on 9 Nov 2016:

      Typically we assess the ethical aspects of researches that involve humans, animals as well as privacy concerns. The principle is always to find a way to work around them, but when there are no alternatives, we then work to minimalize the subjects’ exposure to the assessed risks. These proposals then get sent for approval by governing research ethics committees of your institution.
      When recruiting human subjects, taking their consent to participate after careful and clear explanation of the procedures and risks is the most important aspect of ethical practice.

    • Photo: Ria Vaportzis

      Ria Vaportzis answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      I think the rest have addressed this question very well. We currently adhere to rules to conduct experiments, so people who take part are volunteers and they can stop at any time.

      I have to say though, that it hasn’t always been like that. In the past there have been experiments that have exploited people and their rights. For example, some famous cases of unethical experimentation with humans were performed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany. Josef Mengele was a doctor during the war and he used people in concentration camps to do gruesome experiments.

      Following the war, Milgram conducted an experiment to investigate whether people obey authority figures (e.g., boss) when the authority figure instructed them to do something conflicting with their personal conscience. You can have a look at the original experiment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTX42lVDwA4

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