Wikiversity:Research ethics

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The ethical guidelines for scientific research in the developed world are well established by governmental agencies, professional societies, universities, and journal publishers.

Contents 1 Institutional review boards 2 Protecting humans, animals and nature 3 IRB Exemptions 4 Wikiversity and research ethics 5 References for researchers on human subjects

[edit] Institutional review boards

The ethics of research have partly been institutionalized in the United States and some other countries. If you wish to do research involving humans, you are often required to get research approval from an institutional review board (IRB) or institutional ethics committee (IEC). If research hasn't gone through an IRB, you can't get funding, and most co-authors and journals won't touch the research. Research involving the use of animals typically goes through another board review called an institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC).

[edit] Protecting humans, animals and nature

The role of the IRB is to protect research subjects by ensuring that researchers respect and consider the autonomy (independent decision-making through informed consent), benificence (benefits and costs--such as maintaining confidentiality whenever personal information is obtained), and respect for persons (relating to social justice issues) that may become research subjects. These are the foundations of the protection of research subjects as outlined in the Belmont Report.

[A note to make here on environmental impact statements - use or lack of.]

Environmental impact statements are critical to managing our evolving control and impact on the ecosystem. Even when there might appear there is "No environment, no impact." ... hilarious punchline to people ignorant or contemptuous of a localized space time because of personal bias. Consider that we are preparing to contaminate the Lunar Atmosphere and Surface via a rush to space settlement before science has even scratched a few rocks collected from a meager under ten sites. [1] What knowledge may be escaping us if we screw up the pristine state of the Lunar Surface which has been watching Earth faithfully for all these billions of years potentially recording via cosmic ray scattering and neutrino fluxes all of Earth's history. The very data that the universe or god may need to recover us for our just deserts after we manage to create them (three, very significant, single perfect computer is a universe that knows not itself, no boundary conditions). Essentially failure to establish a scope and baseline to coordinate against opens illegal projects wide open to huge liabilities and unnecessary expenses (true wasted resource from some perspectives, payday for others) when irritated citizens who like the status quo or dislike your intended changes arrive to make damn sure you pay extra over and above what you deserve for your crimes against humanity and the entire planetary ecologies. Mirwin 02:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IRB Exemptions

There are exceptions to the need for IRB review. One example is research on classroom activities, if there is no intent for publication of findings. The use of aggregate data (without any personal information being obtained) may be exempt. For exempt kinds of research, one may still need to state to an IRB the nature and intent of ones research.

[edit] Wikiversity and research ethics

Wikiversity can do various things in relation to IRB requirements. Wikiversity can:

• collect and facilitate discussions of ethical issues in research, especially topics not addressed by IRBs.
• present IRB guidelines to the general public.
• provide researchers with detailed information about IRB processes
• connect researchers with IRB services
• provide descriptions of research guidelines to the developing world. Moving research that couldn't possibly get approval in the developed world to the developing world is a major problem.
• create an IRB (which would be necessary for any Wikipedia sponsored research involving gathering personal information from research subjects).

We will need this for Lunar Boom Town eventually so we can collect user preferences and interest scientifically to improve our game components and ability to mix and match. Also so we can semiautomate diagnostics to help people acquire working permutations of components. No desperate rush. We are starting to attract interest in various elements and levels of play but we have quite a ways to go before we get systematic and statistical about feedback and long term data archives. Mirwin 02:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References for researchers on human subjects

Recommended for researchers - take one of these courses:
These are free, online course with information about the rights and welfare of human participants in research. Anyone who is concerned with the ethics and good practice of research involving human subjects, and who has not taken similar courses, can benefit from taking one of these online courses.

• Research Ethics Training Curriculum prepared by w:Family Health International (FHI).
• National Cancer Institute Human Subjects Research Tutorial. (If you are not involved with research that involves medical treatment and have not take a similar course, you can benefit from the coverage here of some of the general issues relating to all research involving human subjects.)

More ethics links:

• meta:Wikimedia Research Network Privacy Policy
• w:Institutional review board
• Wikiversity:Scholarly ethics