Digging Into the Roots of Research Ethics

There have been examples of researchers violating ethical standards to enhance their own careers.  However Kelly P. Bannister, an ethnobotanist at the University of Victoria went our of her way to protect the indigenous group she researched on their use of plants for food and medicine. 

she withheld extracts of the plants from her graduate supervisor, who wanted to sell them to a pharmaceutical company. Then, when she finished her dissertation, she had it sealed for five years. She didn't want companies to profit from her published work, perhaps at the expense — or at least at the displeasure — of the Indian groups that had collaborated with her.

Ms. Bannister, 41, an adjunct professor of environmental studies, directs a research-and-policy center dedicated to environmental projects at Victoria. She is in demand for publishing on the ethics of research involving aboriginal peoples, and she sits on several university, national, and international committees working to reform research policies.

Her studies focus on making academic research, writ large, more equitable to the indigenous groups it often studies. She concentrates on intellectual property — the stories, songs, and traditions of aboriginal peoples, which have in the past often been exploited or published without the agreement of those who shared them with the researchers.

Read the entire article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept. 1, 2006 issue):  Digging into the Roots of Research Ethics: How a Canadian ethnobotanist became a champion of research that advances the lot of indigenous peoples

Posted by Jon Lutz