National Standards for Public Involvement in Research: missing the forest for the trees

Biomedical research funding bodies across Europe and North America increasingly encourage-and, in some cases, require-investigators to involve members of the public in funded research. Yet there remains a striking lack of clarity about what 'good' or 'successful' public involvement looks like. In an effort to provide guidance to investigators and research organisations, representatives of several key research funding bodies in the UK recently came together to develop the National Standards for Public Involvement in Research. The Standards have critical implications for the future of biomedical research in the UK and in other countries as researchers and funders abroad look to the Standards as a model for their own policy development. We assess the Standards and find that despite offering useful suggestions for dealing with practical challenges associated with public involvement, the Standards fail to address fundamental questions about when, why and with whom public involvement should be undertaken in the first place. We show that presented without this justificatory context, many of the recommendations in the Standards are, at best, fragments that require substantial elaboration by those looking to apply the Standards in their own work and, at worst, subject to potentially harmful misapplication by well-meaning investigators. As funding bodies increasingly push for public involvement in research, the key lesson of our analysis is that future recommendations about how public involvement should be conducted cannot be coherently formulated without a clear sense of the underlying goals and rationales for public involvement.

Does the goal justify the methods? Harm and benefit in neuroscience research using animals

The goal of the present chapter is to open up for discussion some of the major ethical issues involved in animal-based neuroscience research. We begin by approaching the question of the moral acceptability of the use of animals in research at all, exploring the implications of three different ethical theories: contractarianism, utilitarianism, and animal rights. In the rest of this chapter, we discuss more specific issues of neuroscience research within what we argue is the mainstream framework for research animal ethics, namely one based on harm-benefit analysis. We explore issues of harms and benefits and how to balance them as well as how to reduce harm and increase benefit within neuroscience research.

Analysis of Animal Research Ethics Committee Membership at American Institutions

Simple Summary

This study analyzed the membership of animal experimentation oversight committees at leading U.S. research institutions. We found the leadership and general membership of these committees to be dominated by animal researchers and the remainder of the committees to be largely comprised of other institutional representatives. These arrangements may contribute to previously-documented committee biases in favor of approving animal experiments and dilute input from the few members representing animal welfare and the interests of the general public.

Abstract

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) were created to review, approve and oversee animal experiments and to balance the interests of researchers, animals, institutions and the general public. This study analyzed the overall membership of IACUCs at leading U.S. research institutions. We found that these committees and their leadership are comprised of a preponderance of animal researchers, as well as other members who are affiliated with each institution; some of whom also work in animal laboratories. This overwhelming presence of animal research and institutional interests may dilute input from the few IACUC members representing animal welfare and the general public, contribute to previously-documented committee bias in favor of approving animal experiments and reduce the overall objectivity and effectiveness of the oversight system.

A current perspective on the role and needs of IACUC unaffiliated members

To be considered properly constituted, an IACUC must include at least one member who is unaffiliated with the research institution. The unaffiliated member, whose role on the Committee is to represent the general public, is often a non-scientist with little or no previous exposure to the concepts described in the animal-use protocols he or she is charged with reviewing. Needless to say, this knowledge gap can present problems. The author, himself an unaffiliated IACUC member, provides advice for those who may choose to serve in this capacity and suggestions for the institutions that rely on their services.