Guidelines on ethics in research 'too restrictive'

ETHICAL GUIDELINES around research in healthcare settings have become too restrictive, according to a UK-based professor of nursing who will give a talk in Dublin tomorrow.

“We need to move away from a rules-based system to one that asks what harm will it do and what are the benefits?” said Prof Martin Johnson, professor of nursing at the Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Research at the University of Salford, England, in advance of his talk at Dublin City University.

“Many committees have rules about protecting confidentiality and having informed consent, but these rules can’t always be satisfied if research is to be of value,” he said, adding that one researcher hadn’t been allowed to interview those under 16 for a study of teenage pregnancy.

Johnson also argues that researchers have been pushed too far down the anonymity route when asking questions. “Sometimes ethics committees will say that the most vulnerable should be the most protected but for example, people with learning disabilities often desperately want to be known and want their story to be told. It might be their one possibility for their viewpoint to be put in the public domain.”

Covert research is valuable in some cases, he says. “There have been inappropriate studies but there has also been massive over-reaction to these studies, some of which have had long-term benefits.”

The hospice movement has been hugely influenced by covert studies on how people close to death were cared for, he says.

“I remain sceptical that formal approval mechanisms do very much actually to prevent poor ethical conduct of researchers. The most important things are honesty and integrity – qualities that cannot be guaranteed but which we all have some kind of responsibility to promote and develop.”

Prof Martin Johnson will give a public talk at the School of Nursing at Dublin City University tomorrow at 5.30pm