Research Ethics and Codes of Ethics

(Introduction by Dr. Elisabeth Gedge, Ethicist on the McMaster Research Ethics Board)

The commonly held principles of research ethics find their origin in the philosophies of  Immanuel Kant, who defended the dignity of the individual, and John Stuart Mill, who insisted that ethical behaviour must maximise the good. All research, including research with human participant-subjects, aims at producing the good of reliable knowledge. However, in Kant's terms, ethical research must never use human beings only as means in pursuing the good of knowledge. A human being, says Kant, "...is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends of others or even to his (sic) own ends but as an end in himself; that is, he possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect for himself from all other rational beings....He can measure himself with every being of this kind and value himself on a footing of equality with them." (Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue) Thus in research, respecting and protecting the rights, needs, and interests of human participant-subjects is an important ethical constraint upon the pursuit of knowledge.

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