Researchers At Risk

This book explores the phenomenon of researchers at risk: that is, the experiences of scholars whose research topics require them to engage with diverse kind of dangers, uncertainties or vulnerabilities. This risk may derive from working with variously marginalised individuals or groups, or from being members of such groups themselves. At other times, the risk relates to particular economic or environmental conditions, or political forces influencing the specific research fields in which they operate. This book argues for the need to reconceptualise – and thereby to reimagine – the phenomenon of researchers’ risks, particularly when those risks are perceived to affect, and even to threaten the researchers. Drawing on a diverse and global range case studies including Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Balūchistān, Cyprus, and Germany, the chapters call for the need to identify effective strategies for engaging proactively with these risks to address precarity, jeopardy and uncertainty.

Risk assessment has become a dominant public policy tool for making choices, based on limited resources, to protect public health and the environment. It has been instrumental to the mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as other federal agencies in evaluating public health concerns, informing regulatory and technological decisions, prioritizing research needs and funding, and in developing approaches for cost-benefit analysis. However, risk assessment is at a crossroads. Despite advances in the field, risk assessment faces a number of significant challenges including lengthy delays in making complex decisions; lack of data leading to significant uncertainty in risk assessments; and many chemicals in the marketplace that have not been evaluated and emerging agents requiring assessment. Science and Decisions makes practical scientific and technical recommendations to address these challenges. This book is a complement to the widely used 1983 National Academies book, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government (also known as the Red Book). The earlier book established a framework for the concepts and conduct of risk assessment that has been adopted by numerous expert committees, regulatory agencies, and public health institutions. The new book embeds these concepts within a broader framework for risk-based decision-making. Together, these are essential references for those working in the regulatory and public health fields.

The nature of qualitative inquiry means that researchers constantly have to deal with the unexpected, and all too often this means coping with the presence of danger or risk. This innovative and lively analysis of danger in various qualitative research settings is drawn from researchers' reflexive accounts of their own encounters with 'danger'. An original take on the ever-popular topic of the ethics of research, this pioneering book expands the common sense use of the term to encompass not just physical danger, but emotional, ethical and professional danger too, with the authors paying special attention to the gendered forms of danger implicit in the research process. From the physical danger of researching the night club 'bouncer' scene to the ethical dangers of participant observation in an old people's home, these international contributions provide researchers and students with thought provoking insights into the importance of a well chosen research design.

In recent decades, advances in biomedical research have helped save or lengthen the lives of children around the world. With improved therapies, child and adolescent mortality rates have decreased significantly in the last half century. Despite these advances, pediatricians and others argue that children have not shared equally with adults in biomedical advances. Even though we want children to benefit from the dramatic and accelerating rate of progress in medical care that has been fueled by scientific research, we do not want to place children at risk of being harmed by participating in clinical studies. Ethical Conduct of Clinical Research Involving Children considers the necessities and challenges of this type of research and reviews the ethical and legal standards for conducting it. It also considers problems with the interpretation and application of these standards and conduct, concluding that while children should not be excluded from potentially beneficial clinical studies, some research that is ethically permissible for adults is not acceptable for children, who usually do not have the legal capacity or maturity to make informed decisions about research participation. The book looks at the need for appropriate pediatric expertise at all stages of the design, review, and conduct of a research project to effectively implement policies to protect children. It argues persuasively that a robust system for protecting human research participants in general is a necessary foundation for protecting child research participants in particular.

This book explores the phenomenon of researchers at risk: that is, the experiences of scholars whose research topics require them to engage with diverse kind of dangers, uncertainties or vulnerabilities. This risk may derive from working with variously marginalised individuals or groups, or from being members of such groups themselves. At other times, the risk relates to particular economic or environmental conditions, or political forces influencing the specific research fields in which they operate. This book argues for the need to reconceptualise – and thereby to reimagine – the phenomenon of researchers’ risks, particularly when those risks are perceived to affect, and even to threaten the researchers. Drawing on a diverse and global range case studies including Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Balūchistān, Cyprus, and Germany, the chapters call for the need to identify effective strategies for engaging proactively with these risks to address precarity, jeopardy and uncertainty.

This open access book offers a synthetic reflection on the authors’ fieldwork experiences in seven countries within the framework of ‘Authoritarianism in a Global Age’, a major comparative research project. It responds to the demand for increased attention to methodological rigor and transparency in qualitative research, and seeks to advance and practically support field research in authoritarian contexts. Without reducing the conundrums of authoritarian field research to a simple how-to guide, the book systematically reflects and reports on the authors’ combined experiences in (i) getting access to the field, (ii) assessing risk, (iii) navigating ‘red lines’, (iv) building relations with local collaborators and respondents, (v) handling the psychological pressures on field researchers, and (vi) balancing transparency and prudence in publishing research. It offers unique insights into this particularly challenging area of field research, makes explicit how the authors handled methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas, and offers recommendations where appropriate.

Adolescence is a time when youth make decisions, both good and bad, that have consequences for the rest of their lives. Some of these decisions put them at risk of lifelong health problems, injury, or death. The Institute of Medicine held three public workshops between 2008 and 2009 to provide a venue for researchers, health care providers, and community leaders to discuss strategies to improve adolescent health.

Research physicians face intractable dilemmas when they consider introducing new medical procedures. Innovations carry the promise of preventing or curing life-threatening diseases, but they can also lead to injury or even death. How have clinical scientists made high-stakes decisions about undertaking human tests of new medical treatments? In Lesser Harms, Sydney Halpern explores this issue as she examines vaccine trials in America during the early and mid-twentieth century. Today's scientists follow federal guidelines for research on human subjects developed during the 1960s and 1970s. But long before these government regulations, medical investigators observed informal rules when conducting human research. They insisted that the dangers of natural disease should outweigh the risks of a medical intervention, and they struggled to accurately assess the relative hazards. Halpern explores this logic of risk in immunization controversies extending as far back as the eighteenth century. Then, focusing on the period between 1930 and 1960, she shows how research physicians and their sponsors debated the moral quandaries involved in moving vaccine use from the laboratory to the clinic. This probing work vividly describes the efforts of clinical investigators to balance the benefits and dangers of untested vaccines, to respond to popular sentiment about medical hazards, and to strategically present risk laden research to sponsors and the public. “Concise and extremely well-written. . . . A fascinating synthesis of sociology, history, and institutional theory.”—Samuel C. Blackman, Journal of the American Medical Association