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Out of the Clash of Hermeneutic Rules Comes Ethical Decision Making: But Does it?

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Abstract

IRBs and REBs use specialized language. A process of definition and re-definition of the situation occurs. That process of interpretation can usefully be considered from the perspective of interpretive social science models involving Symbolic Interaction, Semiotics and Hermeneutics. Seven examples are provided to flesh out the nuances of contextual decision making and the “casuistic” aspects of a balanced approach to complex problems. While many decisions are relatively unproblematic and can follow a template, it is not possible simply to apply a fixed and mechanical approach. Hence, a socialization process occurs in which committee members must learn the actual application of the rules as opposed to the formal requirements. A “tightrope” between overly rigid and overly lax interpretations must be crossed and the more we understand the process of semiosis and the semiotic context the more likely it will be that truly ethical decisions will be “accomplished.” The lack of adequate survey data makes it all the more important to have good theoretical understanding of process.

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Notes

  1. Having been socialized into the technical vocabulary of sociology I did not fully appreciate the fact that the phrase “the definition of the situation’ can itself be regarded as jargon and as theoretically quite problematic until the assumptions behind the idea were challenged by a colleague in psychiatry. See the technical discussion by Gonos (1977) and Baptista (2003) of the difference between a structural “frame[work]” and a more processual “definition of the situation.”

  2. One obstacle to studying the way in which IRBs operate in the United States is that no one knows precisely how many IRBs there are. Similarly, there is no comprehensive listing of ethics-review panels in Canada either. There is currently no way to draw a representative sample. Most observations tend to be anecdotal and impressionistic. Yet even direct knowledge of dozens of IRBs/REBs will still constitute knowledge about only a fraction of the thousands in operation.

  3. The first printing of the first edition of Park and Burgess was September 1921. I obtained the third printing of June 1922, which seems to be unrevised. The discussion of the “definition of the situation” is on pp. 764–765, but W. I. Thomas is not mentioned there, although he is frequently cited elsewhere, e.g., p. 721.

  4. The interpretive research paradigm in sociology is usually associated with the study of micro-level human interaction in small groups, but it can also be extended to research on meso- and macro-patterns of interaction, as in the comparative historical sociology of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. In this article the focus is on IRBs and other ethics committees as small groups and there is no effort to situate the microinteraction to broader meso and macro frameworks such as the institution of education in Canada or the structure of American society as a whole. Such generalizations would be beyond the scope of the empirical information used.

  5. I will use both “REB” and “IRB” to designate research-ethics committees, although strictly speaking these terms designate committees in Canada and the United States, respectively.

  6. The tension between the notion of a definition of a situation and a framework is found in the work of Erving Goffman. In Goffman’s (1974) second to last book Frame Analysis he presents a more “structured” view, a perspective that could be regarded as somewhat at odds with his earlier utilization of the symbolic-interactionist interpretive idea of a process based definition of the situation (Denzin and Keller, 1981; Goffman, 1981b). On the other hand, “re-framings” of the “core frame” through what Goffman calls “keying” (particularly “re-doing” in the form of “practices”) could be regarded as what is usually meant by situated definitions of the situation.

  7. National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 18 April 1979. http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/mpa/belmont.php3. This is also reprinted as Belmont in Sales and Folkman (2000).

  8. Balancing situational factors is not the same as a full-blown “situation ethics” approach. The responsibilities that researchers have to those who participate in their studies are not simply a matter of applying the rules in one instance but not apply the rules in another. It is a trust relationship and one must always attempt to maintain the safety and well-being of research subjects. For example, the right to withdraw should be non-negotiable. What this article is about is not a situation ethics approach across the board but a recognition that even when we are firmly maintaining ethical values there are still many problematic decisions. Consider, for example, the unanticipated consequences of use of what originally may seem to be an innocent deception and the ways in which debriefing may ameliorate those negative consequences (Eyde, 2000: 67–71).

  9. Various readers felt that the discussion of hermeneutics and semiotics, if placed at the beginning of the article, was too dense for some readers. Hence, for the sake of clarity the more inter-disciplinary discussion is presented in part three. The goal is to deepen the discussion of interpretive practices by linking sociological insights to older and broader insights from the humanities and arts. The linkages between Renaissance humanistic interpretive approaches and social science interpretation are often ignored.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jozefa Heidi Gralinski-Bakker for her insightful comments based on her own work as Chair of an Institutional Review Board. Comments from Thaddeus Mueller, Partrick Parnaby, Bob Prus, Frans Schryer, Jim Thomas and two anonymous reviewers have also been helpful. No comments in this paper should be construed as representing an official position of the University of Guelph. I revised this paper during a sabbatical leave at the Judge Baker Children’s Center, which is affiliated with Harvard University. I presented a draft version of this paper at the Couch-Stone Symposium at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, February 7–8, 2003. Jim Thomas organized a panel on the utility of employing a symbolic-interactionist perspective on how we make ethical decisions in an Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research.

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Correspondence to Johannes Iemke Bakker.

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Bakker, J.I. Out of the Clash of Hermeneutic Rules Comes Ethical Decision Making: But Does it?. J Acad Ethics 4, 11–38 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-006-9023-3

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