Un-ethical review? Why it is wrong to apply the medical model of research governance to human geography

The Economic and Social Research Council, the body which funds much social science in the UK, recently imposed on UK social science a system of research ethics governance already well established in other areas of research and in much of the rest of the developed world. This system requires that research involving human subjects receive prior ethical approval from a committee made up of, typically, multidisciplinary researchers and lay people. Our aim in this paper is to prompt debate about the purpose and practice of such an anticipatory ethical review. We begin by describing the rich and varied ethical and political debates ongoing in human geography. We argue that these are, at best, ignored and, at worst, threatened by this system of ethical review by committee. We describe the emergence of these formal mechanisms of research governance and important differences between the ethical contexts, history, and demands of research in the medical and social sciences. The paper draws on empirical research investigating National Health Service (NHS) research ethics committees to propose three salutary lessons geographers would do well to consider from experience elsewhere with ethical review. We argue that in review by committee deliberations extend beyond the ethical to include the methodological, that the system is a self-perpetuating and increasingly rule-bound mechanism, and that despite a rhetoric of accountability it is a system as obscure to outsiders as professional ethics.