Developing an Ethics and Society Review for Research

随着新技术和新方法的出现，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适当机构回应：对这类研究的批评的关键往往超出了现有研究机制的范围，例如机构审查委员会（IRB），该机构旨在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，我们正在开发伦理与社会审查（ESR），这是一个与研究人员合作的反馈小组，以减轻研究的负面伦理和社会方面。ESR的主要作用是作为资金的要求：在研究人员完成提案的ESR过程之前，研究人员不能从我们大学的主要资助项目中获得资助。在本建议中，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)设计一个涉及伦理学家、社会科学家和技术专家的过程，在研究项目的提案阶段提供富有成效的反馈；(2)将这一过程整合为获得三大校内资助机构资助的必要条件；(3)从资助项目负责人和ESR小组成员那里收集证据，以证明该过程在改变研究人员对研究伦理的态度和行为方面的有效性。对于许多研究人员来说，在研究参与者之外考虑他们的研究的广泛伦理和社会影响的任务是外来的。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导方针，以反映拟议研究的伦理和社会影响。为了做到这一点，我们将结合其他文献综述、试点项目调查和访谈的过程反馈以及pi自己的经验。我们的第二个目标是利用试点项目的经验教训，在三家校园资助机构设计和实施修订后的ESR。该计划的部署将持续三年，在此期间，我们将收集有关ESR过程的数据，用于我们的评估。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，以及它在现有研究伦理制度结构中引发文化变革的能力。为了做到这一点，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过程的每个方面对研究人员关于伦理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作为围绕这一主题的文化变革机制。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.