A collaborative team of environmental sociologists, community psychologists, religious studies scholars, environmental studies/science researchers and engineers has been working together to design and implement new training in research ethics, culture and community-based approaches for place-based communities and cultural groups. The training is designed for short and semester-long graduate courses at several universities in the northeastern US. The team received a 3 year grant from the US National Science Foundation’s Ethics Education in Science and Engineering in 2010. This manuscript details the (...) curriculum topics developed that incorporate ethical principles, particularly for group protections/benefits within the field practices of environmental/engineering researchers. (shrink)

It is now typical for human subjects research to be regulated by review by an independent research ethics committee in most jurisdictions. However it is common for countries to opt to only compulsorily regulate medical research while leaving some or all non-medical research either unregulated or only regulated on a voluntary basis. In this paper I will argue, using regulation in the UK as an example, that it is difficult to justify this sharp distinction in practices. While I won’t come (...) to any definitive conclusions in this paper as to whether research ought to be regulated compulsorily I will suggest that we would be better to regulate all research, albeit perhaps with a lighter touch than the present UK system if we want to prevent some highly risky research avoiding appropriate regulation. I will examine several arguments to defend making such a distinction; that medical professionals have special moral duties, that medical research has a higher magnitude/frequency of risks and that regulating non-medical research constitutes the inappropriate imposition of the medical model onto non-medical research. Having critiqued these objections I will then discuss the advantages of harmonizing the regulation of research and conclude that there is not a good reason to treat medical and non-medical research as fundamentally different in kind. (shrink)