Taxonomic Chaos in the Confused Canadian Bioethics Industry: Apres Moi la Deluge

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of a decade-old movement in Canada to purportedly raise ethical standards in research with human subjects, even though no systematic evidence has ever been presented either that there are serious ethical problems (especially in psychological research), or that the solutions imposed by the movement would improve the ethical situation, and not harm research's fundamental epistemological enterprise. The movement began with the activities of a committee from Canada's three major government research councils, the Tri-Council Committee (TCC). Like all ideological enterprises, it provided taxonomic chaos by, for example, confusing ethics with epistemology and feelings of discomfort concerning an area of investigation with intellectual expertise about that area. It also went beyond its American counterparts by calling its proposals a code of conduct rather than guidelines, and proposing that if a so-called research participant (i.e., a subject) did not like the in...