Research ethics and research integrity usually focus on the matters concerning proper methodology and research conduct, i.e., ethical aspects (standards, guidelines, values, norms, policies, etc.) of research conduct, procedures, and practices (e.g., transparency of research, reliability, and protection of data, the reputation of researchers, authorship, human subject protection, and informed consent). What is often absent from the considerations of research ethics and research integrity is the question about the ethical acceptability of the subject, that is, the content or topics that one is investigating and the acceptability of the results. This might seem somewhat of a strange claim to make, given the pivotal importance that academic freedom and the freedom of research have within science and scientific communities. Marc Schiltz, Science Europe President, recently stated the following.

“Academic freedom is of utmost importance for democratic societies to continue building Europe’s resilience.” (link to the source)

In October 2020, the Bonn Declaration on the Freedom of Scientific Research was adopted by the Ministerial Conference on the European Research Area. But does such freedom of research have limits?

Before proceeding, let me clarify two issues and then add a remark on my perspective taken in this blog entry. First, I am not focusing on the ethical consequences of research results. That is, with the claim that some research topics are unethical, I do not mean to say that some possible consequences or applications of the research are unethical. A simple case of this would be the research of genetic engineering of living organisms that would result in knowledge on how to make them more invasive to a particular ecosystem and to use this knowledge to engineer such organisms with the mentioned aims. The use of such knowledge would then generate these unethical consequences. Second, I am also not talking about personal research integrity and personal ethical views of researchers that might play a role for them to see certain paths of research as unethical, e.g., as in the case of research involving human embryos. Unethical consequences relevant here are the possible consequences to one’s personality or character. In line with this, there is a famous example of the ethical dilemma presented by Bernard Williams in his essay “A Critique of Utilitarianism”, in which he puts forward the notion of negative responsibility.

What I what to open as a question in the rest of this post is thus are there ethically unacceptable research subjects/topics (and research results) as such (independently of the possible consequences of such research). I want to approach this issue with a concrete case and related debates.  Before doing so, I want to mention that the case and debates are not in any way representative not do they constitute a systematic overview of the issues. They mostly stem from my subjective experiences and specific interests as a researcher in my research domain. (My field of research is philosophy, and I particularly focus on issues in moral theory, practical ethics, and epistemology).

I first came across such issue of the clash between research ethics and freedom of research questions related to the topics of research and views held when reading about the now-famous case of Hypatia journal and the paper by Rebecca Tuvel in April 2017. Rebecca Tuvel was then an untenured assistant professor, and she published a paper “In Defense of Transracialism” in Hypatia. (The paper was peer-reviewed and thus passed the usual test for academic standards.) The topic of the paper was transracial; in the paper, Tuvel made the analogy between transgender transition or state and the possibility of transracial state or transition. More specifically, one of her claims was that “[s]ince we should accept transgender individuals’ decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals’ decisions to change races.” (source) The paper was clear, concise, and well-argued. As an illustration, she compared the situation of Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, to that of Rachel Dolezal, a woman who identifies as black.

A few days after the publication of the paper, there was a nasty response that first of all targeted the author. Among the remarks that the author had to face on social media and other sites were that she is transphobic, racist, crazy, stupid, and a perpetrator of “epistemic violence” and harm, while the paper was said to be crap and “wack shit,” expressing “white ignorance and discursive transmisogynistic violence,” etc. The author received (serious) proclamations that her career is ruined and that she will never get tenure or her work to be published again and that she should retract her paper. (source)

What is even more horrifying was the response at the “institutional level.” One week after the publication of the paper, an open letter was published, signed by a majority of the Hypatia’s associate editors and several other prominent feminist scholars (overall, there were 830 signatories on the first day). The letter demanded the journal to retract the article, open its editorial procedures to scrutiny, release a statement about improving its review process and undertake to involve in future people targeted by transphobia and racism and scholars who specialize in the related relevant subfields of philosophy. The author was accused of deadnaming, the use vocabulary and frameworks not recognized, accepted, or adopted by the conventions of the relevant subfields, etc. including that it fails to seek out and sufficiently engage with scholarly work by those who are most vulnerable to the intersection of racial and gender oppressions (women of color) in its discussion of transracialism. (source) An “apology” also followed that read: “We, the members of Hypatia’s Board of Associate Editors, extend our profound apology to our friends and colleagues in feminist philosophy, especially transfeminists, queer feminists, and feminists of color, for the harms that the publication of the article on transracialism has caused. The article should not have been published.” (source)

Most of the accusations were not true or missed the point of the paper in a significant way. A wider debate followed that was highly polarized, both within the field of philosophy as well as in the wider sphere. Admittedly, some of the arguments clearly evoked the supposed harm of such research and publication (although such harm can also be disputed), but what is particularly interesting is that some evoked straight-up claims that transracial in relation to transgender issues as a topic might be ethically objectionable. This can be seen in discussions that suggest that we should not evaluate argument and positions from a “logical-epistemic” point of view but also engage in “ethical” assessment (not merely of the consequences (e.g., actual harm), but of the arguments themselves, including their content, method, and style). These proposals are interesting, and “the jury is still out” about their significance and impact.

I think that the case presented and the issues raised following this case provide an excellent opportunity to focus on some of perhaps more peripheral concerns in research ethics and integrity that move us beyond more traditional concerns. They interrelate research ethics with aspects of academic freedom and, most of all, hint that there might be new standards to look out for in these borderlands.

Feature image author – @freepik