Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Science, Technology & Human Values
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
0162243908328760v1
34/3/337    most recent
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Barke, R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Balancing Uncertain Risks and Benefits in Human Subjects Research

Richard Barke

Georgia Institute of Technology, barke{at}gatech.edu

Composed of scientific and technical experts and lay members, thousands of research ethics committees—Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in the United States—must identify and assess the potential risks to human research subjects, and balance those risks against the potential benefits of the research. IRBs handle risk and its uncertainty by adopting a version of the precautionary principle. To assess scientific merit, IRBs use a tacit ``sanguinity principle,'' which treats uncertainty as inevitable, even desirable, in scientific progress. In balancing human subjects risks and scientific benefits, IRBs use uncertainty as a boundary-ordering device that allows the mediation of the science and ethics aspects of their decisions. One effect is the entangling of methodological and ethical review. Some have suggested these should be more clearly separated, but decisions by research ethics committees depend in part on the negotiating space created by incommensurable approaches to uncertainty.

Key Words: uncertainty • risks • human subjects research • ethics • benefits of science

This version was published on May 1, 2009

Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 34, No. 3, 337-364 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0162243908328760
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?