Neuroscientists' everyday experiences of ethics: The interplay of regulatory, professional, personal and tangible ethical spheres

Brosnan, C; Cribb, A; Wainwright, SP; Williams, C

Neuroscientists' everyday experiences of ethics: The interplay of regulatory, professional, personal and tangible ethical spheres

Brosnan, C

Cribb, A Wainwright, SP Williams, C

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Sociology of Health and Illness, 2013, 35 (8), pp. 1133 - 1148
Issue Date:: 2013-11-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Brosnan, C https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2104-4937	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Cribb, A	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Wainwright, SP	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Williams, C	en_US
dc.date.issued	2013-11-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Sociology of Health and Illness, 2013, 35 (8), pp. 1133 - 1148	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	0141-9889	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/117896
dc.description.abstract	The ethical issues neuroscience raises are subject to increasing attention, exemplified in the emergence of the discipline neuroethics. While the moral implications of neurotechnological developments are often discussed, less is known about how ethics intersects with everyday work in neuroscience and how scientists themselves perceive the ethics of their research. Drawing on observation and interviews with members of one UK group conducting neuroscience research at both the laboratory bench and in the clinic, this article examines what ethics meant to these researchers and delineates four specific types of ethics that shaped their day-to-day work: regulatory, professional, personal and tangible. While the first three categories are similar to those identified elsewhere in sociological work on scientific and clinical ethics, the notion of 'tangible ethics' emerged by attending to everyday practice, in which these scientists' discursive distinctions between right and wrong were sometimes challenged. The findings shed light on how ethical positions produce and are, in turn, produced by scientific practice. Informing sociological understandings of neuroscience, they also throw the category of neuroscience and its ethical specificity into question, given that members of this group did not experience their work as raising issues that were distinctly neuro-ethical. © 2013 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Sociology of Health and Illness	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1111/1467-9566.12026	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Public Health	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Humans	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Professional Role	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Morals	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Sociology, Medical	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Neurosciences	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Biomedical Research	en_US
dc.subject.mesh	Translational Medical Research	en_US
dc.title	Neuroscientists' everyday experiences of ethics: The interplay of regulatory, professional, personal and tangible ethical spheres	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	8	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	35	en_US
utslib.for	2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields	en_US
utslib.for	1117 Public Health and Health Services	en_US
utslib.for	1608 Sociology	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Health
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.issue	8	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	35	en_US

Abstract:

The ethical issues neuroscience raises are subject to increasing attention, exemplified in the emergence of the discipline neuroethics. While the moral implications of neurotechnological developments are often discussed, less is known about how ethics intersects with everyday work in neuroscience and how scientists themselves perceive the ethics of their research. Drawing on observation and interviews with members of one UK group conducting neuroscience research at both the laboratory bench and in the clinic, this article examines what ethics meant to these researchers and delineates four specific types of ethics that shaped their day-to-day work: regulatory, professional, personal and tangible. While the first three categories are similar to those identified elsewhere in sociological work on scientific and clinical ethics, the notion of 'tangible ethics' emerged by attending to everyday practice, in which these scientists' discursive distinctions between right and wrong were sometimes challenged. The findings shed light on how ethical positions produce and are, in turn, produced by scientific practice. Informing sociological understandings of neuroscience, they also throw the category of neuroscience and its ethical specificity into question, given that members of this group did not experience their work as raising issues that were distinctly neuro-ethical. © 2013 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/117896