Research is critical to the advancement of any field, whether it is engineering, medicine or even management. However allowing researchers to conduct experiments without any supervision or without checking in with some regulatory authority might put them and others around them at risk. The premise of this paper is to argue that research regulation is necessary to ensure that civil rights of those involved with the experimental safeguarded.
In the five case studies that were outlines for review, one common factor among them was that in cases when researchers were given freedom to perform experiments they put the results and the experiment as their priority and not the people who were associated with it, as in the case of the Guatemala Syphilis Experiment. When people are connected with research,their rights and safety has to be ensured, since this rule is maintained even when animals are used in experiments. Whether the people involved are illiterate or poor or unaware, researchers do not have the right to misguide them or to manhandle them in any way. The case study of experiments on aboriginals is also a glaring example of this. (Markham, A., 2012)
Inthelight of this, the Institutional Review Board should set up a panel that would authorize research initiatives are scrutiny of the research proposal. An assistance from the department should be attached to the research team for supervisory and monitoring purpose. The help might not be an active participant of the project,but his presence would ensure that the Steps towards the project. Simply forcing regulations would not stop researchers from finding loopholes. Active involvement is the only way that a new trend in this direction can be started.
Works cited :
Markham, A. (2012). Fabrication as ethical practice: Qualitative inquiry in ambiguous internet
contexts. Information, Communication, and Society, 5(3), 334-353.
