WELCOME TO THE ETHICS PROJECT

This project has a long history. The issues that stimulated the project are as relevant today as when this project began. It was designed to address issues associated with the ethics review of research, in particular research associated with the social sciences and other alternative paradigm research. As it developed it began to include medical research because so many of the issues were the same.

Despite changes over the last decade in the review of research projects, far too many of these issues continue to plague the ethics-review process. In fact, in the last 40 years or so little has really changed. The writings on the process from the 1980s are just as relevant today as they were then.

The project was initially informed by my experiences with the process, my reading of the research ethics literature, and the experiences of my students and colleagues. As the project developed it was informed by the ethnographic data that was collected.

What we came to call The Ethics Project is an ethnography of the ethics review process for research involving humans and involves an anthropological analysis of research ethics and the ethics review process as culture and cultural process. It did this through document reviews, case studies, key informant interviews, observations of the ethics review process, and other ethics-review related experiences.

This site provides background information on and copies of products from this research. Simply press on any highlighted title and the article should download. There is a copy of our information sheet, together with details on the progress of the project, and links to most of the copyright approved published articles and presentations. There are also many links to other potentially useful sites. Please come in and see what occurred on this ARC funded research project.

We would like to encourage those of you who are doing research in this area to consider writing papers for submission to JERHRE, Journal of Academic Ethics and The Open Ethics Journal. The more information on this issue that is shared, the more likely the project will have moved towards meeting its goals.