Developing an Ethics and Society Review for Research

制定研究伦理与社会审查

• 批准号: 2124734
• 负责人: Margaret Levi
• 金额: $ 39.95万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2124734&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Developing; Ethics; Society; Review; Research

With the advent of new technologies and methodologies, academic research has been routinely criticized for its negative impacts on society. We lack adequate institutional responses to this responsibility: the crux of the criticism of such research often falls outside the purview of existing research mechanisms such as the Institutional Review Board (IRB), which are designed to evaluate harms to human subjects rather than harms to human society. In response, we are developing the Ethics and Society Review (ESR), a feedback panel that works with researchers to mitigate negative ethical and societal aspects of research. The ESR's main insight is to serve as a requirement for funding: researchers cannot receive grant funding from major funding programs at our university until the researchers complete the ESR process for the proposal. In this proposal we describe a new set of institutional arrangements: the Ethics and Society Review (ESR). The goals of the ESR are to: (1) design a process that involves ethicists, social scientists and technologists in providing productive feedback to research projects at their proposal stage; (2) integrate that process as a requirement to receive funds from three major on-campus grant-giving institute; (3) gather evidence from grant PIs and ESR panelists as to the effectiveness of the process for changing researchers attitudes and behaviors toward research ethics.For many researchers, the task of considering the broad ethical and societal effects of their research, outside of research participants, is foreign. Therefore, our first objective is to develop improved guidelines for researchers and ESR panelists to reflect on the ethical and societal impacts of proposed research. To do this, we will utilize a combination of additional literature reviews, process feedback from the pilot program survey and interviews, and PIs’ own experience. Our second objective is to use the learnings from our pilot program to design and implement a revised version of the ESR at three on-campus funding organizations. The deployment of the program will occur over three years, during which time we will collect data on the ESR process for our evaluation.Our third and final objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of individual components of the ESR as well as its ability to engender cultural change within existing institutional structures around ethics in research. To do this, we will use a stepped wedge trial design (SWT). This objective will allow the ESR to determine the effect each aspect of the ESR process has on researchers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding ethics. With that information, we will be able to further improve the ESR process and promote the ESR as a mechanism for cultural change around this topic.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

随着新技术和方法的出现，学术研究经常因其对社会的负面影响而受到批评。我们缺乏对这一责任的充分机构回应：对此类研究的批评的症结往往超出了机构审查委员会（IRB）等现有研究机制的范围，这些机制的目的是评估对人类受试者的危害，而不是对人类社会的危害。作为回应，我们正在开发道德与社会审查（ESR），这是一个反馈小组，与研究人员合作，以减轻研究中的负面道德和社会方面。 ESR 的主要见解是作为资助的要求：在研究人员完成提案的 ESR 流程之前，研究人员无法从我们大学的主要资助项目中获得资助。 在本提案中，我们描述了一套新的制度安排：道德与社会审查（ESR）。 ESR 的目标是： (1) 设计一个流程，让伦理学家、社会科学家和技术专家在研究项目提案阶段提供富有成效的反馈； (2) 将该流程整合为从三个主要校内资助机构获得资金的要求； (3) 从资助 PI 和 ESR 小组成员那里收集证据，证明改变研究人员对研究伦理的态度和行为的过程的有效性。对于许多研究人员来说，在研究参与者之外考虑其研究的广泛伦理和社会影响的任务是陌生的。因此，我们的首要目标是为研究人员和 ESR 小组成员制定改进的指南，以反思拟议研究的伦理和社会影响。为此，我们将综合利用额外的文献综述、试点项目调查和访谈的流程反馈以及 PI 自己的经验。我们的第二个目标是利用试点计划的经验教训，在三个校园资助组织中设计和实施 ESR 的修订版。该计划的部署将在三年内进行，在此期间我们将收集有关 ESR 流程的数据以供评估。我们的第三个也是最后一个目标是评估 ESR 各个组成部分的有效性以及其在围绕研究伦理的现有制度结构中引发文化变革的能力。为此，我们将使用阶梯楔形试验设计 (SWT)。这一目标将使 ESR 能够确定 ESR 过程的各个方面对研究人员关于道德的态度和行为的影响。有了这些信息，我们将能够进一步改进 ESR 流程，并推动 ESR 作为围绕该主题的文化变革机制。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Ethics and society review: Ethics reflection as a precondition to research funding.

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2117261118
• 发表时间: 2021-12-28
• 期刊: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• 影响因子: 11.1
• 作者: Bernstein MS;Levi M;Magnus D;Rajala BA;Satz D;Waeiss Q
• 通讯作者: Waeiss Q