Discourses of dislike: responses to ethics education policies by life scientists in the U.K., Italy, and the U.S.

RECENTLY ESTABLISHED POLICIES FOR ethical conduct of researchers have resulted in efforts to implement those policies through educational practices. While these policies and training efforts have good intentions, how do researchers respond? Little research has been conducted to understand how researchers react to ethics policies, and to ethics education requirements as a particularly salient part of the policies. This research explores variations in the responses of life scientists to policies originating in the U.K., E.U. and U.S., between 2000 and 2003. Semi-structured interviews with 30 life scientists in the U.K., Italy and the U.S. provide the basis for the findings. Across the interviews, scientists consistently reported dislike of the ways the ethics policies and ethics programs are implemented, but with variation by country. U.K. life scientists regarded the policies tied to Research Council (RC) funding with a skeptical attitude, expecting that policies would change with RC leadership. Italian life scientists often noted the lack of funding (and policies) at the national level, and appeared frustrated by what they viewed as overly complex policy requirements at the European level, where successful grantees employed outside consultants to complete the ethics sections of their applications. U.S. life scientists expressed distaste for the implementation of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy in web-based ethics training modules. This research suggests that introducing new shallow routines that are separate from daily research and educational practices in science may be worse than no ethics training at all, if it turns off young researchers to the discussion of ethical issues. Observing variation in scientists' discourse on ethics policies allows us to see how education following ethics policies might be more effective, and indicates that ethics policy formation more informed by empirical research is a desirable goal.