The political aspect of research ethics in the human sciences

Abstract

The ethical aspect of human sciences research goes beyond issues of respect for persons, disinterestedness, and benevolence. Questions of power and legitimacy, interests, control, participation, and distribution are integral to the epistemological underpinnings of human inquiry and have an important bearing on research ethics. A critical model of consciousness and society provides background to a critique of the reduction of the human sciences to technicism, a phenomenon in which these questions are seen as lying beyond the scope of science. After an outline of reservations about the critique itself, six points are offered as guidelines for an ethical stance: the need to see the importance of issues of justice and freedom in any truly human science; circumspection about the use of the term ‘scientific’; greater epistemological awareness (as opposed to technical skill), including openness to alternative modes of understanding; attention to the impact of research; a deliberate effort to break down the dicho...