What is the actual process by which academic ethics change? [closed]

Question

Some of the answers to my question Are academic ethics global or local? indicate the possibility that academic ethics themselves (rather than just laws and policies affecting academics) may change over time.

What is the actual process by which academic ethics may be altered? More specifically, is the process:

• Top-down, in which regulatory agencies, funding sources, legislatures, etc. push down new rules onto academics, who are expected to internalize them as normative? (e.g. "Please take note that fooing the bar is now against our Code of Ethics. If you do not cease all bar fooing activity by the end of the fiscal year, your grant will not be renewed.")

• Bottom-up, in which written codes of ethics, laws, funding guidelines, etc. are modified as time goes on to match popular consensus? (e.g. "According to our recent surveys, 95% of academics and 82% of the general public Agree with the statement 'It should be considered unethical when academics foo the bar.'. For the 2020 fiscal year, we should make not fooing the bar a requirement for funding.")

The question can alternately be phrased as asking about the nature of academic ethics themselves - whether the "true state" of what is ethical and what is not is part of written rules of academia (and thus reflected in applicable policies, laws, procedures, etc.), or part of the unwritten rules.

Answer 1

I'm sure both processes happen.

The latest Common Rule for human subjects is a great top-down example. https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2019/01/07/nih-implementation-of-the-final-rule-on-the-federal-policy-for-the-protection-of-human-subjects-common-rule/

This process reinvestigated human subject ethics in the context of modern-day genetics. It almost required specific informed consent for the collection of deidentified tissue, with periodic renewals of consent and the ability to yank consent. Picture what that would do to say, developed perpetual cell lines used for research! MANY universities were waiting anxiously to see what would come out of that process and there were very large discussions on how such requirements would be met. We even modified our CLINICAL operations to accommodate anticipated changes that never happened!!

I say this is a great top-down example because the ethics are, and still remain, hard to figure out. Stakeholders had to get together and form consensus. Nobody knew what the outcome would be when the process started.

As an example of bottom up, there is the example of neurosurgeons that now require sham surgeries before adopting a new procedure. This fell out of human fetal tissue transplant attempts. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1733639 There is no relevant reg, but I'm sure this is now incorporated into RSRB discussion.

Answer 2

Top down makes little sense. Regulations are independent, generally, of ethics. Some regulations embody ethical principles and some don't. On the other hand, behaving ethically shouldn't require regulation.

Bottom up, as you state it, makes little sense. I isn't "consensus" that makes a thing ethical or not. At one time, in the US, there was (somewhat less than universal) consensus that slavery was appropriate and necessary to the well being of the country.

Ethics itself derives from principles and from theoretical concepts of the nature of humanity and our world. These principles are debated by philosophers and others and only evolve slowly. Very slowly. Most of the ethical principles at play today are very old.

Applied ethics, however, is a bit different. Applied ethics needs to apply the ethical principles to changes as they evolve. The rise of automation, for example, has caused rethinking of some of the economic principles used to organize modern society. What is right in this context, derives from fundamental principles of what is right.

But new thinking about applications of ethics only permeates through a society slowly as there are vested interests at play that may be (relatively) disadvantaged by new thinking. I don't know my history well enough to know when plagiarism, for example, became an issue. But far enough back, I doubt that anyone thought much about it. But when new knowledge started to be associated with individuals, and those individuals depended on it for their livelihood, it became more and more of an issue. I doubt that Aristotle, for example, gave a thought to it. That implies a sometimes bottom up (permeate) and sometimes top down (recognize and codify) process. Not a dichotomy, but also, only applicable to applied ethics not ethical principles.

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To give an example, the Tuskegee Experiment was unethical, though there were, apparently, no laws or regulations at the time to prevent it's being carried out. Afterwards, laws and regulations were created to make it obvious to everyone that it was wrong. But it was still unethical and immoral in the absence of any such regulations. It isn't the laws and regulations, later passed, that made it unethical.

What the laws and regulations did, however, was to make it easier for others to make proper judgements without actually considering the ethics and making their own determination. "Do this, and you will avoid an ethical trap."

Had those who carried out the experiment done a proper ethical analysis they would (or at least should) have realized that it was unethical.

But, again, those rules and laws are just already existing ethical principles being applied.