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Communitarian Principles That Will Increase the Damage Done by Ethical Regulation? A Response to ‘The Quest for Generic Ethics Principles in Social Science Research’ by David Carpenter

Finding Common Ground: Consensus in Research Ethics Across the Social Sciences

ISBN: 978-1-78714-131-5, eISBN: 978-1-78714-130-8

Publication date: 15 February 2017

Abstract

This chapter is written in response to ‘The Quest for Generic Ethics Principles in Social Science Research’ by David Carpenter. I address his communitarian arguments for additional principles to inform a virtue theory approach to research ethics. These require that social researchers ensure that their research is both socially and scientifically valuable, and that they ‘involve members of the public in the designing, planning, delivery, ongoing monitoring and dissemination of research’. Carpenter underpins these principles with an appeal to the common good as a balance to the more individualistic principles characteristic of principlism. I argue that enforcement of these new communitarian principles via ethical regulation would further undermine the quality of research, and especially of academic social science.

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Citation

Hammersley, M. (2017), "Communitarian Principles That Will Increase the Damage Done by Ethical Regulation? A Response to ‘The Quest for Generic Ethics Principles in Social Science Research’ by David Carpenter ", Finding Common Ground: Consensus in Research Ethics Across the Social Sciences (Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity, Vol. 1), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 19-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2398-601820170000001002

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited