Roles for ethical and social values in environmental health research

Abstract

Research ethics is often conceptualized in a relatively narrow way, such that it focuses on issues like authorship, mentoring, animal welfare, and respect for human research subjects. This chapter argues for a much broader conceptualization of research ethics for environmental health, focusing on the importance of managing value judgments in environmental health research. It provides an overview of recent philosophical literature on the role of value judgments in scientific research and argues that it would be irresponsible for the environmental health community to ignore the social consequences of these judgments. Building on this overview, the chapter suggests an approach for managing value judgments in environmental health research based on three principles: promoting transparency about judgments, striving to make them in ways that meet ethical and social priorities, and creating opportunities for engagement to deliberate about how to handle them in a responsible fashion.