An unethical ethics code?

Abstract

That professional sociologists are in the throes of moral and intellectual an guish over ethics issues is propitious, as the turmoil accompanies deep uncer tainties over the entire scientific enterprise. The forces of deconstructionism and the more radical versions of social constructionism sanction, unwittingly, a moral relativism about what can be known and what is worth knowing. Some political positions on how to research the disenfranchised have brought agoniz ing reappraisal among some fieldworkers of how best to tap subjective states (and even who can legitimately try to tap them). The recent public revelations about radiation experiments of the 1940s and 1950s, some carried out without any sort of consent, have rendered many sensibilities aghast (though the mass of unconsented research projects, both in and out of sociology, far outweighs the radiation researches). And, more proximately, cases directly involving sociolo gists (especially those of Mario Brajuha at SUNY-Stony Brook and Richard Scarce at Washington State) have led many?especially fieldworkers?to wonder about the moral and legal status of ethical precepts. The Brajuha and Scarce cases also brought into sharp relief the substantial difference between the ethical claims of ASA and the actual demands of fieldwork. Indeed, my arguments here stem from the fact that official claims of profes sional prerogative are sometimes at sharp variance with the practicalities of research. This gap creates considerable moral and practical ambiguity about how best to protect subjects and advance knowledge while acknowledging some allegiance (albeit often grudgingly) to the larger social good. Sometimes researchers' "rights" coincide with the public interest, sometimes they don't; but whichever is the case we need to think through more carefully what, exactly, we mean by "public interest" and "professional right." In what follows I develop this theme and explore some of the uncertainties and para doxes involved in simultaneously affirming value commitments to the research subject, the professional interest group, the larger society, and, last but not least, self-interest. I believe we need to admit more publicly than we have that