Balancing Ethics: The Fine Line Between Regulation and Overreach in Research (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Less is more, an alleged quote by the Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld. He detested the Jugendstil thrills of his time. Stick to straight lines, thank you very much. Whilst writing this book, I often wondered whether that applies to ethics as well. Not too much theory, please. I obliged and crammed the book full with examples, case studies, dilemmas, less is more. Now to the reverse, because sometimes the opposite seems true. Can more also be less? I ask this question because there is a broad-based desire to not only teach ethics, but also to regulate it. Today there is an abundance of commissions and committees that control everything researchers do. I work at Utrecht University's Department of Social Sciences, where we, too, have such committees. Being a member of one of those, it wasn't before long that I discovered that those committees have a tendency to want more and more. More forms, more questionnaires, and, most importantly, more control. Please specify who your respondents are, how old they are, and what are you going to ask about their sexual preferences, and if so, why? And so on, and so forth. Does more control really result in better ethics? If researchers are forced to think about moral questions, then the answer is yes. It's also good to have a few people watching over your shoulder, as it creates transparency. However, it's well known that too much regulation can also lead to loss, specifically in the field of ethics. There's even a term for it. Ethics creep. When ethics becomes a tick box, something you run through the system because you have to, ethical self-consciousness is lost. You throw it out through the back door. But with this book, I hope to cultivate it at the entrance instead. Straight lines? Yes. But let's make them not too narrow.