ETHICS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH

Amar Jesani

310 Prabhu Darshan, 31 S. Sainik Nagar, Amboli, Andheri West

Mumbai 400058, India. Tel: (91)(22) 26770227. Email: jesani@vsnl.com

The social science research in health has come of age in India. Never before such high
volume of research using a very wide range of methodologies was carried out as is being
done now. Although health research is not so high on the agenda of a large number of
institutions and university departments of the country, most of them have opened up to it,
or it is seen as one of the important areas for the social and health scientists to undertake
research. Moreover, they find the technical aspects of medicine less intimidating, and there
are indeed more students doing their doctorate or the master’s thesis on health related
issues than in the past. In addition, we have public health institutes with stronger social
sciences components than available in the medical colleges, which give post-graduate
degrees in preventive and social medicine. Vast amount of research generated from such
institutes is also contributing in the ever-increasing corpus of social science research in
health. On the other hand, in last two decades, the health data generated in various rounds
of the National Sample Surveys Organisation (NSSO) have been supplemented by the
district level surveys and even by the national level health surveys by the social sciences
institutions and population studies centres. Notable among them are the surveys of the
National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi and the two
rounds of the National Family Health Surveys of the International Institute of Populations
Sciences, Mumbai; with their collaborating organisations across the country. Add to these
the health research work of the Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) of different types
all over the country and also several international organisations working in collaboration
with Indian organisations; we have a really large number of organisations undertaking
health research.

The variety in organisations undertaking social science research is only matched by the
variety of the researchers. The very fact that not so many biomedical and social scientists
were involved in social science health research till 1970s left open space for a wider
variety of individuals to get involved. This was aided by the fact that the
“professionalisation” of the social science disciplines has remained low and some scope
existed for multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches, albeit much of it was
outside the formal university departments. Thus, it is not unusual to find medical doctors,
community health specialists, individuals from other health sciences and natural sciences
making their contribution to the social science research in health. In the NGO sector in
particular, this space was more available and we find several activists of the NGOs, often
not having any formal training in research in general or social science research in
particular, also making their contribution. Besides, within social scientists, one finds lots of
interdisciplinary work, with sociologists getting involved in health economics studies or
economists doing sociological and anthropological studies, or social workers undertaking
policy research and political scientists involved in researching counselling techniques.
The variety in the institutions and individuals undertaking health research has also gone
hand-in-hand with the variety that has emerged in the kind of methodologies used for
social science research. While surveys, with their old understanding of “the bigger the
better”, are still preferred as they provide greater opportunities to influence health policies,
the smaller surveys to develop newer and rigorous methods of data collection, to bring out
specificities of the problems of regions and different social strata – particularly the
oppressed and underprivileged groups; to supplement the larger surveys that have missed
out on the nuances of the situations, and for many other objectives; are carried out. At the
same time, in last one and half decades, the quantitative survey methodology is both
challenged and supplemented by a wide array of qualitative research methodologies. Thus,
in-depth interviews and case studies, focus group discussions, participant observations,
role-plays, games, and so on are used more in health research than ever before. Indeed, the
qualitative research has very forcefully made its way despite the scepticism of the
quantitative researchers; and brought at the centre-stage many social concerns conveniently
ignored by the survey researchers in the past. The gender issues, the reproductive and
sexual health issues, etc. have found prominent place in the research enterprise. And such
work is also pushing hard the policy makers to recognise the contribution of qualitative
research findings. Thus, there are more researchers now trying to triangulate different
methodologies in their research.

The expansion of the number of institutions, individuals and methods in social health
research naturally coincided with the increase in the kind of research topics being
investigated. While the traditional areas of the health research – the general health surveys,
the health seeking behaviour and disease perception studies, etc. have continued and
deepened their scope by bringing in more specific but sensitive issues such as reproductive
and sexual behaviour, studies in provision of information and communication, behaviour
of providers, etc. have also increased. Another sensitive area finding greater attention of
researchers is the family violence, the violence and its effect on the victims and survivors,
behaviour of providers in situations of violence and so on. It is not possible to list all such
areas of research, but it is sufficient to note that health has found connection with many
more social issues and vice versa than it was done in the past in India. As a consequence,
very sensitive data are being generated with the increased potential for good as well as bad
use of them and also having potential to shake up conservative cultural norms.

Lastly, there is also an increased trend of sponsored research that is enmeshed in the above
situation. In the past, the research at the universities and academic institutions depended
heavily on the departmental and government sponsorship, with very few social science
research projects done with sponsorship of outside private organisations. But the decline in
the official sponsorships gradually acted as compulsion; for many departments to opt for
outside support for research. At the same time the sponsoring of the research outside the
university departments and institutions by the government and the foreign sponsoring
agencies first brought many NGOs in the health research. But this opening has been
enlarged by the sponsoring agencies of all kinds by bringing in the for-profit marketing
research and other private organisations. While the private for-profit marketing research
organisations have made major inroads in successfully bidding for large health research
projects from the foreign donors and even the government departments, the other such
agencies like the advertisement firms, the consultancy firms and individual consultants,
etc. have also entered the field of health research. Much of the research done by such
organisations is not traditional academic research where in a classical way, global
questions are posed and the information is used for building new theories or to modify the
existing ones. Much of such research is not published in scientific peer reviewed journals
as it stays either as confidential report for the sponsoring agencies or few copies of their
reports are published for circulation in narrow circles by those agencies. Such research is
usually narrowly empirical and applied research, with little efforts at generalisation and for
developing comprehensive understanding of the social health. Indeed, the effect of this
trend – both in terms of availability of the finances and the demands made – is such that it
has started acting as some kind of intellectual and financial discouragement for the
academic and theoretical research in health. Added to this scenario is also the increasing
number of evaluation research. While experimental social health research in terms of
demonstration projects or action research, is considerably old in India, the intervention
research with pointed objective of bringing about desired social change in relation to health
and health care is an emerging area of multidisciplinary research enterprise.

Problems of proliferation:

The multi-dimensional proliferation has created double impact on the social science
research. Firstly, it provided some visibility to health research in the social sciences as well
as in biomedical disciplines. This was due to the sheer volume and the rapid increase of
such social science health research. Secondly, it also made many ethical problems in social
science health research more visible than ever. Many health professionals who entered
social science health research brought their concerns of professional ethics to this field, the
highly applied nature of research made ethical concerns more prominent than it was in the
pure or theoretical research and at the same time, the entry of untrained individuals to
social science produced controversies on some of the outputs of the research that were
identified with the violation of ethics or rights of the participants. In fact, historically, the
concern for research ethics appeared first in the empirical applied research than the
conceptual or theoretical simply because the former tried to find immediate answers to the
existing problem and were often undertaken in order to make intervention or to
recommend intervention(s). Over and above all such considerations, the ethics have started
becoming prominent, not only in research but also in other fields of health work simply
because of the increasing impact of the human rights movement and the efforts to bring to
public notice various mal-practices of the professionals. The latter has effectively shattered
the demigod image of health professionals, leading to questioning of their conduct more
than ever in the past.

While societal gaze is sharply focusing on the conduct of health professionals and
researchers, there is inadequate parallel development of regulatory or self-regulatory
mechanism to incorporate social concerns in research and to monitor the works of theirs. In
fact, as compared to the biomedical research, in the field of social science research in
health, little effort has been made to evolve some consensus about how such mechanism
should address the ethical concerns and monitor the conduct of researchers and
professionals. The social science institutions are mostly devoid of any institutional
mechanism to review and monitor research, and have not applied their minds about the
standards and tools to be used for such purpose. On the other hand, under the increasing
public pressure and for the reasons of its own, the biomedical institutions are gradually
trying to establish or activate the existing defunct institutional review and monitoring
mechanism, but they lack conceptual tools to appreciate and review the social science
health research. Much of it is clubbed, often without giving serious thought, under the
heading of “minimal harm” research. Indeed, till recently, even within the field of
biomedical research, the social harm and benefits were hardly considered important issues
for discussion in the review of research proposals and the ethical guidelines did not attach
adequate importance to them. As a consequence, the societal concerns and the regulatory
or self-regulatory mechanisms were often at odd with each other, sometimes leading to
open confrontations. Since the researchers are not actually regulating themselves, not being
transparent about their work, and not being seen to be concerned about the demands made
for such transparency and regulation, the situation is tarnishing bad as well as good
research with one brush, making good concerned researchers uneasy and the public
sceptical about all of them.

Assuming that good, socially relevant research undertaken for the betterment of people’s
lives is absolutely essential and that the researchers’ job is to meet such need, the issue of
the ethical standards and mechanism for observance of ethics in research become highly
relevant at present time in our country. The chief purpose of guidelines is to evolve ethical
standards and methodology for resolving dilemmas. The Guidelines of the ICMR (Indian
Council of Medical Research) and NCESSRH of the CEHAT should be viewed as
contribution in this direction.

Social sciences, medicine and research in health

Often most of the ethics guidelines for research focus on those research that involve human
beings, and of late, also animals. Many people thus get an impression that by implication,
any research that does not directly involve human beings need not have ethical concerns, or
ethics is not intrinsic to such research endeavour. For instance, very little is talked about
the ethical issues while undertaking research in the physical sciences that deal with
chemicals and things, the ethics becoming prominent only at the time of publication of
findings of such research and at the time of application of its findings having effect on
human and social lives, and the environment. That is one of the reasons why the physical
sciences do not have elaborate guidelines on ethics intrinsic to its research work but have
guidelines only for their applied disciplines. However, this simplistic understanding is
going through a profound change. The scientists who were involved in discovering atom
and how to split or fuse its components in laboratories using physical matters, also
discovered to their dismay that the energy generated was used to destroy human beings,
animals and the environment. More so, in recent times, the laboratory-based work in
genetics using biological material brought out problems in ethics of even pure science not
directly involving human beings and animals. The researchers from physical sciences
involved in applying their science for inventing weapons to be used directly for killing or
maiming human beings, or even the pure or fundamental research undertaken with the
specific purpose to eventually apply for inventing weapons for such purposes, need to
ponder over both the purpose and eventual use and misuse of their work. Indeed, the
concerns of ethics and human rights, the concerns of human beings, society and its
environment are increasingly breaking the boundary of pure and applied research; and
boundaries between the ethics in physical, medical, social and other branches of science.

Biomedical research:

The medicine on the other hand has component of pure bio-medical research including that
not requiring direct participation of human and animal subjects; and its application to
human beings. Medical professionals work as researchers in both but are more visible as
researchers as well as care givers in the clinical settings. The medicine has a long and
known history of concerns for ethics since ancient times, though the modern medicine is
only few centuries old. The tradition of medical ethics has endured over centuries and
found place even when medicine got transformed and modernised. In an excellent brief
historical exposition of medical ethics, Albert Jonsen (2000: ix-x) explains that although
this tradition is informed by divergent discourses of many centuries and cultures, there are
several consistent themes within such discourses that provide us with a framework for
understanding moral concerns in medicine. He designates three major domains of ethics in
general and their particular application to medicine, viz. decorum, deontology and politic
ethics. He describes decorum as comprising a variety of attitudes and actions, with names
such as politeness, courage, respectfulness and resoluteness; the qualities that are often
called virtues (or vices). Deontology (deon means duty or obligation) is built around the
understanding of what one ought to or ought not to do, and thus is expressed in terms of
rules, guidelines and principles. And the politic ethics, a term not so often used in the
ethics discourse, looks beyond the individual, to the society, to the individual in
relationship with others, and to the medicine in relation to society. Thus, the guidelines
getting converted into codes for regulations, the formal mechanisms for their practical
application and the concern for the purpose and wider impact of medical research fall in
the domain of politic ethics.

Despite its profound history, the medical ethics before World War II paid more attention to
consolidating the power of medical profession and to arbitrating the disputes within the
profession than protecting patients and research subjects (Jonsen 2000: 51 and 91-97,
Rayack 1967: 7-8). But the War stirred the sedate tradition of medical ethics. On August
19, 1947, 20 Nazi physicians and 3 medical administrators were handed verdict by the
Nuremberg War Tribunal for their participation in “murder, torture and other atrocities
committed in the name of medical science”. Nine of them were sentenced to long prison
terms and seven were sentenced to death by hanging for subjecting unwilling victims to
medical procedures that were called scientific experiments, thereby having caused their
death, disfigurement or disability (Jonsen 2000: 100). Interestingly, the War also brought
about scientific revolution in medicine as during the War the US poured money for “more
effective military medicine”, and the financial support for medical research continued even
after the war. Thus, between early 1940s and 1965, treatment for infections, delicate
surgical procedures, life sustaining devices and so forth were discovered and brought into
use in medicine and they in term brought forth new ethical problems. In 1960s, thus came
into existence the “new” discipline of bioethics. The Nuremberg tribunal also formulated
Nuremberg code for scientific experiments with voluntary informed consent as the central
feature. Further development in the formulation of ethical guidelines for biomedical
research, however, had to wait for a controversy or research scandal in 1960s and 1970s.
The first was the impact of a paper by Henry Beecher (1966) reviewing ethics in 22 cases
of research. It showed that investigators had endangered the health or life of their subjects
without informing them of the risks or obtaining their consent. Soon this was followed by
the scandal of research, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, initiated in 1932 by the US Public
Health Service in Macon County, Alabama to determine the natural course of untreated,
latent syphilis in black males. It comprised 400 syphilitic and 200 uninfected men (as
control); and went on unhindered till 1972 when the public outcry and investigations
stopped it (Brandt 2003: 20). This controversy stirred the US government and as a result of
the Senate hearings, the Congress passed the Research Act of 1974 that made it necessary
the establishment of Institutional Review Boards. At the same time in 1974, the National
Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioural
Research (1979) was appointed; it operated till 1978 and published its now famous
Belmont Report in 1979.

Social sciences research:

Social sciences, as a systematic practice of social inquiry and data collection, are not very
old, though the discipline of Humanities, from which they separated in 17th and 18th
Centuries, is having long history like medicine, and also provided a corpus of social
theories to social sciences (Barnes 1979: 27). The social sciences comprise of several
disciplines, such as anthropology, economics, sociology, psychology, demography,
statistics and so on. For undertaking research in all of them, the scientists cannot but deal
with human beings or from the data generated by other agencies, including governments,
on the human beings. Thus, social sciences deal systematically with the behaviour, status,
relationships among people; with the social institutions created and operated by them; and
with the social and physical environment in which they function and relate to each other. A
researcher doing social inquiry into the functioning of the market, state, family, health
services and systems, individuals in various institutions, and so on, is therefore, dealing
with human individuals, collectivities and their institutions. Besides, social institutions are
not simple organisations devoid of their good and bad elements; they all are embodiments
of the kind of power structures existing within the society. The information made available
from the social inquiry could be a powerful tool for further entrenching those in power as
well as for unseating them in favour of others; for increasing exploitation and oppression
as well as for getting rid of them. Thus, the use of the findings of social research could
have far-reaching consequences for the autonomy, well being and privacy of the individual
as well as communities and the society. Indeed, the purpose for which the research is
undertaken, the way research is conducted and the manner in which its findings are used;
all have direct relationship, involvement or impact on human beings, and that makes the
social research the most contested terrain in the research enterprise. Added to that is the
fact that researcher himself or herself come from the same society, and despite using
seemingly objective methodologies and tools for research, his or her views have great
bearing on what, why and how of the research.
The 17th and 18th Centuries that heralded systematic social inquiry also were a part of the
era of development of modern scientific method whose one of the aims was to discover, in
a rational way, the laws governing nature. While this inaugurated great revolution in
science, it also made an impact by bringing method of science to the social sciences. This
became known as positivism in the philosophy of social sciences. It is an approach that
“applies scientific method to human affairs conceived as belonging to a natural order open
to objective inquiry” (Hollis 2000: 41). In the early years of development of social
sciences, this approach was not seriously challenged. According to Barnes (1979: 23-4),
“empirical inquiry in sociology began with the poor, in social anthropology with natives
and in psychology, after an early period when highly trained respondents were used, with
students”. When the “objects” of research are highly subordinated and the outcome of
research enlightenment or discovery of “truth” for elite scientists, such approach could
easily hold the sway; and the scientists hardly talked of ethics in such an endeavour. But
unlike atoms and chemicals, these “objects” are living human beings, and so they not only
talk to researchers but also talk back. Society of humans can’t be treated as terrain for
unattached objective research in the same way as laboratory, and since they are not static
and society not a finished product, the humans also shape and reshape the social laws and
structures. Thus, as the poor and the natives found more voice, the positivist paradigm
started getting challenged and the ethical concerns of social inquiry started emerging as a
part of the social science discourse. Indeed, this also triggered off evolution of newer
methodologies for social science research, and so we now have a wide spectrum; starting
from those who give science over-arching importance and people who are being studied as
mere objects of research to methodologies treating people as subjects, participants, equal
partners in scientific exploration or even as dominant determinants of how the research
should be conducted. The advent of “action research” put paid to the detached and
objective research, as it necessarily makes researcher committed, not detached;
implementer, not mere observer. In all methodologies, and not only in action research, the
researchers do take position by acts of omission or commission, and thus, invariably face
ethical problems.

From his insights into the history of evolution of social sciences, their methodologies and
theories, Barnes (1979: 14) proposed a model comprising of four parties in social science
research enterprise for understanding the source of ethical concerns. These four parties are:
(1) people or citizens or participants with or about whom the research is being undertaken;
(2) the researchers or scientists who carry out the inquiry (and we may include here the
institutions from where the researcher do this); (3) the sponsors of research – who could be
government or non-government agents, including the research institution if it is financing
and providing material support for research; and (4) the gatekeepers or facilitators, who
control access to the participants or people or any other research material. These four
parties are normally having different positions of power in research enterprise, and so the
interaction among them in the process of research creates ethical problems and issues. At
the same time, the solution for the ethical issues is also embedded in the way they behave
with each other. According to Barnes (1979: 24), “any worthwhile practical attempt to
resolve ethical issues in social inquiry has to take into account the distribution of power
between scientists, citizens, sponsors and gatekeepers, and will often involve negotiation
between the parties rather than the inflexible application of operationalised rules of
procedure”.
This scepticism for rules, procedures, codes and guidelines for resolving ethical issues is
deep-rooted among a large section of social scientists. Perhaps that explains why unlike
biomedical research, which also directly deals with the human beings, the professional
bodies of social scientists were late in formulating ethical guidelines for professional
conduct and took even longer to accept them in their research work. In India, this process
is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, internationally, despite enduring internal scepticism the
social sciences have made many advances in formulating guidelines. They did so because
they also had their Tuskegees.

Controversies of social science research and ethics

Historically, the concern for ethics in research of any kind got highlighted in response to
the controversies around the inappropriate conduct of research. Each “scandal” about the
gross malpractice in research, and then, each controversy about the correct way of
achieving good for the participants as well as research, generated debate on whether and
how to regulate and self-regulate the enterprise of research. The codification of commonly
practiced ethical norms in terms of Ethical Codes, Guidelines or Conventions and
Declarations were natural outcome of such concerns at the national and international
levels. Thus, in the words of Susanna Rance and Silvia Salinas (2001), “ethical guidelines
carry the historical burden of abuses already perpetrated”. Thus, guidelines and periodic
revisions of them often carry a sense of guilt felt by the community of researchers in face
of public exposure of inappropriate conduct of research or the charge of injustice
perpetrated, consciously or inadvertently, in the past. However, everything in the
guidelines is not directly related to the scandal, there are also many elements that are
formulated keeping in mind the best ways used by researchers in resolving the ethical
dilemmas and problems encountered and at the same time many elements also reflect the
changing power relationship between the four parties; and the relations between the local,
national and international researchers and sponsors. All of them thus make it imperative
that controversies and accumulation of the wisdom from the past are made educational
material for the future generations so that similar controversies are avoided.

The discipline of anthropology was one of the first to experience problems. In the colonial
times, till the later part of the 19th Century, many of the administrators of the colonial
powers took keen interest in understanding the society they had subjugated and were
ruling. In India, the colonial administrators’ reports provide the glimpse into and the
anthropological material on the way they looked at the alien culture and society. But much
of such interest was either a part of the curiosity or a part of immediate interest for setting
up a system of exploitation favourable to the power. As the anti-colonial struggles
intensified or due to sheer need to rope in the local elites for managing the conquered
society, they needed more information and that came from their administrator providing
insights of anthropologists or from the anthropologists themselves. The anthropology
providing any service for reinforcing the power of rulers against the natives they were
studying inevitably created tension. And controversies on the ethical conduct hit the
discipline from time to time. The 1st World War intensified this many fold. In the year
2000, David Price had an opportunity to examine documents of the 1st World War
declassified under the Freedom of Information Act by the US government, and what he
read provided some verification of the debate that took place in 1919 in American
Anthropological Association (AAA). Writing in the November 20, 2000 issue of The
Nation, Price (2000) mentions a letter written on December 20, 1919 to The Nation by
Franz Boas, the father of academic anthropology in the USA, accusing four American
anthropologists for abusing their research position by conducting espionage in Central
America during the 1st World War. However, the governing council of the AAA
immediately censured him for abusing his professional position by making such
accusation, and thus absolving the accused anthropologists from wrongdoing. Price (2000)
found enough material in the declassified files substantiating the accusation of Boar, but
not only that, one of the accused scientist went on to repeat his espionage work for the
intelligence agencies of the US government in the 2nd World War too. Similar debate
among the social scientists took place during the Vietnam War in which the US social
scientists were engaged in their professional capacity by the military on an unprecedented
scale, and charges of unethical conduct were made against and disputed by those involved
and others (Barnes, 1979: 66). It was argued that the areas of Vietnam for bombing were
often determined by using the findings of the social scientists on the rebel influence or
hideouts.

The use and abuse of social sciences are covered in many writings in last 50 years and
longer. For instance, Frank Heller’s (1986) edited volume on this subject not only
examines various methodologies that have been evolved to give space to the views of
participants of the studies but also looks at the situations in which the research is used or
misused. Once one goes into the use and misuse, one is not only talking about the
essentiality of social scientists not undertaking any classified and covert research – a
guidance very prominent now in most of the social science codes or guidelines - but also
about being very conscious of the purpose of research and its potential use and misuse. The
ethical obligation of the social scientists to protest and correct the misinterpretation and
misuse of their research is therefore now part of many guidelines of social sciences.

Project Camelot:

The relationship between the information and power is extensively discussed. Information
is power and the powerful exercise their rule by having access to crucial information. That
makes the social scientists both vulnerable and powerful in face of those who sponsor their
work and has first opportunity to use the information generated on what is going on in the
society. In the 1960s the controversy around the multi-million dollar project called
Camelot by the American University with sponsorship from the Defence Department of the
US brought in sharp focus all such issues and as a fall out of this aborted attempt, stirred
the social scientists, particularly of the US, to put their house in order and accept some
regulations. This project came into being as an offspring of the Army’s Special Operation
Research Office (SORO) with an initial grant of six million dollars for three to four years,
a single largest grant ever provided for a social science project till that time in the US. The
project was located in the American University, was looked at as basic social science
research with participation of academic sociologists, political scientists and
anthropologists. Its objectives included study of pre-conditions of internal conflicts and
discovering the effects of action taken by local governments in easing, exacerbating or
resolving these preconditions. The data collection was envisaged from various Latin
American countries and later on also from other parts of the world. Since the US Army
sponsored the project, there was clear possibility that it would use the information to cope
or manage internal conflicts in other countries (Barnes 1979: 47, Horowitz 1967: 4-10,
Silvert 1967: 81).

The name of the University, availability of almost unlimited money and possibility of
undertaking big-range social science research attracted many well-known social scientists
from across the US. Some did feel uncomfortable at the military sponsorship but at the
same time believed that armed forces also needed to be educated. Some were ideologically
convinced that US military could play a good role in preventing “revolutionary holocaust”.
But none of them viewed this as an assignment for spying on behalf of the US government
(Horowitz 1967: 7-8). As the core group of the social scientists was put together, the
efforts to enlist the academic social scientists from some Latin American countries for
collaboration began. When such efforts were made to enlist academic social scientists in
Chile, the person doing it did not disclose upfront the military sponsorship though the same
was well known within the US. This was construed as camouflage for possible motive for
espionage. But as soon as this became known, first there was a protest from some Chilean
academics and then the media took it up resulting into street demonstrations against such
project of the US. And this happened in the backdrop of the US intervention in the
Dominican Republic to stop the spread of Cuban revolution and to support the right wing
military government. The embarrassed US Embassy in Chile sent out a message
demanding explanation from its government. The Chilean government set up the
committee to investigate and the US started similar exercise to reconcile differences
between its defence and foreign policy departments on the project and to streamline such
future funding. Thus, within a year of its high profile initiation, the project was scrapped
and all social scientists associated with the project came in the eye of stormy debate on
their conduct.

While the allegations of spying were strongly made in the popular and political debates,
but soon receded after initial furore, the academic community was forced to gear up to
initiate debate in all aspects of the project so that correct lessons were learnt and
assimilated. The debate touched upon wide range of issues such as methodological
soundness of the project, morality of working with the sponsorship of the military
establishment, the issue of the extent to which the social scientists and the University
department involved in it had autonomy to determine the conceptual framework,
methodology and analysis of the study, the use of deception in research, the relationship
between research and policies of the country – both domestic as well international, the
problems of studying conflict situations and the conflict within the research; and so on.
The very fact that a social science project created diplomatic problem between two
countries and received high level of public attention made this project a reference point in
the formulation of new and reformulation of the existing ethical guidelines in social
sciences.

Indeed, despite all guidelines and promises of self-regulations, the ethical issues raised by
this project are not settled and they keep generating debates. As mentioned earlier, the US
military establishment did recruit social scientists to undertake studies in Vietnam only few
years after the disastrous demise of the project Camelot, thus showing that “patriotism”
could be a potent force against consideration of ethics. Not only in the social science
research that has close relation with politics and its use and misuse in policy making are
contentious issues, but the debate is often similar in the international biomedical research,
too. In the contemporary world, the politics, economics, international relation and science
of all types are so closely interlinked that no scientist can afford to limit the concerns for
ethics in the narrow domain of science and the data collection. Every research endeavour is
a block in priority setting, each one is done not only with the quest for more scientific
knowledge but also with some other purpose(s) in a specific social context and
sponsorship, facilitation or support.

Social science in laboratory – deception and harm:

The amount of social science research undertaken in the controlled laboratory setting on
human beings is often less known. But that is where many of the experiments in
psychology are carried out. One that led to intense controversy and therefore sharp
attention to ethics was Stanley Milgram’s series of experiments conducted to assess the
extent to which the subjects or participants obeyed the authority of experimenter in giving
painful electric shock to an unknown innocent person. They were carried out in laboratory
between 1960 and 1964 at Yale University, USA. The participants were told that the
experiments were meant to study effects of punishment on learning, and they were asked to
give increasing amount of electric shock to a “learner” whenever he made a mistake in
learning. In the actual experiment, whenever the subject gave electric shock to the
“learner”, no electric current passed but the “learner” feigned pain upon whenever subject
punished him by increasing the electric shock, thus making the subject to believe that he
had actually given such shock and pain to the “learner”. The findings revealed that a very
high number of subjects, despite knowing that they were giving excruciating pain by using
electric shock, continued to increase it at the order of the researcher. The conclusion of
course showed that people do commit atrocities in obedience to the commands of
authorities (Kimmel 1996:13-14).

Two major ethical issues raised by these experiments shook up the community of
psychologists. The first was deception. The participants were not told about the true nature
of experiment, they were told only about studying response to punishment on learning.
There was also deception involved in not actually having electric current and giving of
pain, but making the participants believe that they were giving electric shock and the pain.
Thus, deception was combined with “rigging” of the experiment, the latter of course being
necessary simply because giving actual shock and pain could have been blatantly unethical.
For the former, however, a strong methodological justification was made out. By knowing
the true objective of the research, the subjects could have changed their behaviour. The
second ethical issue raised was related to the kind of discomfort and harm that the subjects
giving pain could have experienced while participating in the experiment and later on when
they were actually told about the true nature of experiment they participated. Although
Milgram defended himself very strongly by showing that there were no indication of
injurious effects on the participants (and opponents claiming otherwise), the controversies
around his experiments made the researchers realise that “use of deceptive and stressful
methodologies in laboratory studies are obvious source of ethical dilemmas” (Kimmel
1996: 15). The controversy also increased search by the psychologists to evolve new
methodologies for research, including experimentation outside the laboratory, in the
community, in what was termed as “naturalistic settings”. Thus increased the popularity of
simple observations of public behaviour as against the surreptitious observations used very
often in the past, contrived observations where the researcher intervenes in the natural
setting by creating staged events and then observing the behaviour, participant
observations, and so on. The increasing number of new methodologies also brought with
them ethical issues faced by researchers in other social sciences to psychology, such as
intrusion in the privacy of those being observed, seeking consent of those being
experimented upon or the problem of anxiety faced by the participants in the staged events.

Secrecy, deception and intrusion:

In social science research, what to tell and what not to tell the participants so that their
behaviour do not change making research difficult, or how to make the participants give
information about themselves that they often keep guarded, or whether or to what extent to
intrude into the privacy or personal/private domain of the participants; are very sensitive
and often contentious ethical issues. Many otherwise good studies done with good
intentions faced intense criticism on these issues. Two well-known ones, though extreme
cases, would serve as good illustration. One is Wichita Jury Study that began in 1954 and
another is Laud Humphrey’s “tearoom trade” study done in late 1960s and published in
1970.

The US uses the jury system in the judicial decision-making. The Wichita Jury study was
designed by law professors from the University of Chicago to understand the adequacy of
the jury decision-making process. The researchers, with permission of the judges and the
opposing advocates, and without informing the defendants, plaintiffs and the jurors; hid
microphones to record jury deliberation of six separate civil cases. The researchers also
committed that the recording will not be listened to till all cases had been closed including
the appeal process and the anonymity of all participants would be ensured. There was a
massive public uproar when this became known. Apart from the issue of the violation of
law – the US constitution guarantees the secrecy of the jury deliberation – it also raised
questions related to confidentiality and privacy. Above all, it was also criticised for its
potential to harm the jury system – the realisation that without their knowledge their
deliberation could be secretly being recorded could adversely affect the jury decision-
making process (Kimmel 1996: 11). The attempt to learn the secrets of socially and legally
necessary secret deliberations using deception and intrusion of privacy thus fell flat.

On the other hand, in the “tearoom trade” study, Humphrey attempted to observe the
homosexuals gathering at the public restrooms (called by them “tearooms”) in a disguise of
being a “watchqueen” who was allowed to watch sexual acts without participating and in
exchange for serving as a look out to warn of approaching strangers. Humphrey also noted
down the license plate number of the visitors to the restrooms and later on visited them in
the disguise of market researcher at their residence to collect information about them. After
obtaining information, he destroyed the record containing identities of the participants so
that their identities could not be revealed. The study came under heavy criticism for its
failure to protect privacy of the participants and for using questionable means for data
collection. The negative reaction was so intense that it prompted an unsuccessful attempt to
have his doctoral thesis (for which this research was done) rescinded (Kimmel 1996: 15-
16).

The secrecy, deception and intrusion are so pervading issues in social science inquiry that
they are constantly in debate. Sissela Bok (1984) in her book titled “Secrets: on the ethics
of concealment and revelation” has extensively documented such research, investigations
including investigative journalism, under-cover police operations and many other
endeavours in which they are used. Interestingly, one finds that the zeal of social scientists
with good or bad motives is so high in entering the otherwise forbidden zones that many of
them refuse to accept any boundaries in their work. Such things are also intimately
connected to the contemporary understanding of how the idea of privacy and personal are
viewed by the researchers and the society.

All such issues and some of the public controversies motivated social scientists to spend
some time in formulating boundaries and guidance for themselves. In that process it was
natural that those social sciences where the applied research had advanced creating
dilemmas related to its use and misuse; and where the use of “questionable” methods
having elements of deception and potential stress for participants was high; were the first
to initiate process of formulating their guidelines. Thus, the American Psychological
Association established a special committee on scientific and professional ethics in 1938
and the Society for Applied Anthropology was the first to adopt formal ethical guidelines
in 1951. The post War period, and particularly the controversies of 1960s and early 1970s
accelerated this process. It should be kept in mind the controversies of 1960s took place in
the context of wider social upheavals like anti-War movements, students unrests, rise of
black movements, high level of anti-imperialist sentiments and struggles and so on. The
controversies only undermined the moral stature of data collectors leading the questioning
of the utility and benefits of providing information for national surveys and Censuses by
the people belonging to underprivileged strata.

In 1972, the 16th General Conference of the UNESCO, expressed interest in the problems
relating to the ethics of social science research, and in 1973 it commissioned an
international survey of codes of ethics adopted or under review by national and
international professional associations of social scientists. The researchers approached
some 300 such associations, received response from about 90 national associations and of
them 24 submitted their codes of ethics. Analysing findings in UNESCO’s journal,
Reynolds (1974) explained that most associations had their codes in the “set-of-principles”
format expressing concern for the risks to human participation and promotion of good by
research; and many code had high value attached to the integrity of the research, the risk-
benefit analysis, emphasis on informed consent and honouring commitments made,
deception to be used only if absolutely essential but additional precautions necessary,
strong emphasis on the respect for privacy and assurance of confidentiality, and so on.
Some of them paid attention to the problems associated with sponsors and publication,
while few had mechanism on penalties for non-compliance incorporated in the codes,
making him to comment that, “the full force of the applied professional model has yet to be
instituted”. His general conclusion was that among the reporting associations, a basic set of
assumptions and values related the conduct of research were widely shared and that each
code reflected concerns related to part of the total situation. The low response rate from
social science associations was due to the amount of time and resources needed for
formulating such codes, the limited membership and authority of the association within the
researchers, variations in availability of resources for undertaking social science research
and the primary interest being science rather in the formalised procedures.

Putting together the findings and conclusion of this international survey, it is clear that
while concerns for ethics were steadily rising in the social sciences and there were many
shared understandings of the ethical standards among social scientists, the further
developments were possible only with the increase in the institutional growth of the social
sciences and their associations. Developments of last 30 years seem to indicate that there is
such requisite growth of the organised structures of social scientists and therefore also
formalisation of guidelines. The social science associations along with the Universities
have shown more inclination to adopt ethical guidelines and regulations on research. A
bulk of such development is still concentrated in the developed countries, but in last one
decade there has been very positive developments in the rest of the world too. Social
science research in health is one area of social science research that is increasingly
showing trends towards some formalisation of guidelines. A part of the reason is the
impact of globalisation of biomedical research, including clinical trials, and the increasing
volume of social science research in health, particularly the applied research in the
developing countries.

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