The following letter concerning the most recent draft of the Tri-Council Code of Ethics was sent to HSSFC by Richard Tees (President) on behalf of CSBBCS.
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To: Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC)
From: Professor Richard C. Tees, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia and President, Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science.
Re: Tri-Council Code of Ethics
I am writing on behalf of the members of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) concerning the revised (July 1997) Tri-Council Code of Ethical Conduct for Research involving Humans. Our scientific organization represents 500 or so researchers across Canada who are doing scholarly work with the support of NSERC (primarily GSC 12), MRC and SSHRC. More than half of our membership is conducting investigative work exclusively with human subjects.
Preamble: First, we recognize that the July 1997 revision of the code is an improvement over the last version. However, the residual problems with the revised code has to do with the fundamental difficulty of trying to write a general code to cover the extraordinary range of research involving human subjects potentially supportable by one of the three research councils (MRC, NSERC, SSHRC). What may be needed in certain circumstances is not needed in many others. In creating the one code,metaphorically, the drafters have had to put themselves, their code language and proposed procedures at a great distance from the many research environments in which scholars actually work. As a result, the procedures seem irrelevant to most of the people the code will affect. The three separate councils exist, in part, because it is recognized that one granting agency cannot be made to serve all effectively. The legitimate concerns and controls needed for the protection of sick individuals involved in studies of the effects of new medications, for example, are not relevant for a study of the cognitive processing of sentences carried out with undergraduate students as participants. Retrospectively, the energy, money and time would have been better devoted to trying to revise codes tailored to the type of investigations supported by a council. We believe that it is not too late. In an ideal world, this is what should be done at this point.. Using the revised code as a background paper, each council should revise it's own code.
Another general difficulty with the revised code also reflects the initial "top down" approach taken. The councils will be requiring each university to establish and operate expensive (in time and money) Research Ethics Board (REB) related procedures. Unlike the situation in the United States, Canadian universities administer federal and provincial funded research grants with little or no overhead funding. They do so currently and presumably will continue to do so, even while their budgets are being reduced and/or while they are being asked to do more with the funds now available. By adopting these complex procedures, the councils will be off loading responsibilities and costs without providing any additional funds. The result has to be that less research (and /or teaching) will be done at Canadian universities in the future. We are sure this is not the intention of the three councils or an outcome they would endorse.
Finally while the revised code does acknowledge the obvious and profound difficulty the members of any REB would have in judging whether or not hundreds of projects proposed by researchers across many disciplines meets minimal scholarly standards(e.g. page 18), this code does not acknowledge that we have hundreds of highly qualified discipline- and field- specific experts on the Grant Selection
Committees(GSCs) who currently take on this responsibility as part of their evaluations of research proposals, and are "setting the bar" a lot higher, as well as setting it more knowledgeably We know the three Councils will want those individuals to continue to do this job, and we have no reason to believe the Councils lack confidence in the job their GSCs are doing in this respect. We do endorse the idea that each university continue to have an ethics review board with a broad membership and access to legal opinion. We suggest, however, in keeping with the idea of a hierarchical review process, in which ethical review of all applications by department and /or discipline based committees continue to provide an initial ethical assessment. The REBs would focus their attention on, and provide guidance, in those cases in which a clearly articulated threshold of minimal risk was exceeded.
Specific Observations.
Page II-5. This paragraph contains a very important principle, somewhat akin to the "hierarchical review" suggested by many researchers (including those represented by CSBBCS) in suggestions about the earlier versions of the code. WE STRONGLY ENDORSE THIS PRINCIPLE AND ENCOURAGE IT'S ADOPTION WITH RESPECT TO ALL "MINIMAL RISK" RESEARCH. The code outlines very strict rules in respect to the membership of REBs (Page II-3) and the requirement (Page II-6, article 2.4) that REBs make their decisions in "face to face" meetings. This seems inconsistent with the paragraph and principle we endorse (page II-5) . For committee deliberations involving real ethical and legal dilemmas, these procedures need to be in place. However, for many minimal risk experimental situations, which will involve many projects, the implementation of such procedures will create an unimaginable logjam and expense. The members of this scientific organization also remain unconvinced that lawyers and /or people with no university affiliation will volunteer and devote the extraordinary time needed to serve effectively on the REBs. This requirement should not be put into place until the councils and universities are some evidential basis for being confident that this is feasible.
Page II-7, Article 2.7. This article is unclear. When is a project complete? When a researcher thinks the last subject has been tested? .. when the paper has been submitted? ..when the manuscript has been accepted? Moreover, such specific information can only be meaningful when considered in a much broader context. As is common in any debriefing of participants at the present time they are given a broad context about why the experiment was conducted and what types of interpretations of the data are possible.
Page I-7. "If signed consent is required, the participant must be given a copy of such a form and any relevant written information." This section is unclear as to when a participant's signature is required by the revised code. However, the current practice of university researchers in CSBBCS involves routinely collection of signatures of participants in all research situations. We can see no purpose in providing an individual copy of such "signature forms" to each participant in every instance. One would have to assume that the code would establish some "threshold of risk" for an "official" signed consent form to be required. The rationale, and the conditions for any new requirement would have to be explained more effectively in the final version of any code.
I hope these comments are helpful in your assessment of what to do next with respect to the revised tri-council document. Our carefully considered advice , as I indicated earlier, is to use the revised code as a background document in creating individual codes for each council. I understand that a great many other Canadian scientific organizations, including the Canadian Psychological Association, have come to the same conclusion. Together we urge you to vigorously argue that the Councils pursue this course of action.
c.c. Henry G. Friesen, President, Medical Research Council
Thomas A. Brzustowski, National Sciences and Engineering Research Council
Marc Renaud, President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
