{"id":3807,"date":"2009-06-07T14:02:43","date_gmt":"2009-06-07T14:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2009\/06\/australia-beats-us-again\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:49:18","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:49:18","slug":"australia-beats-us-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2009\/06\/australia-beats-us-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia beats US, again"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s my tabloid journalist headline for what is a serious, some would say momentous, development in the history of the Linguistic Society of America<\/a> (LSA), namely the adoption last month by the Executive Committee of the LSA of an Ethics Statement<\/a> [.pdf]. Its Ethics Committee has been working on a draft statement for the past two and a half years, and engaged in consultation within the Society.
\nThere is an article dealing with the issue in this week’s Inside Higher Ed<\/a>, but it focuses on what I believe are two less important aspects of thinking about ethical issues in linguistic research, namely what could be paraphrased as “how to stop linguists from screwing things up” and “how to get round the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process”.<\/p>\n


\nOn the “don’t screw things up” front, it quotes Lise Dobrin<\/a>, Chair of the LSA Ethics Committee, as saying:<\/p>\n

“What you want to do is alert researchers to the need to be sensitive. What you don’t want to happen is to go through research blindly and cause an uproar and not know that it’s happening. The research has to have integrity, but our job is to navigate these issues with compassion. … linguists should be conscious of all the possible social repercussions of their work and ways that their work is likely to be misinterpreted.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While this is an important dimension of ethics in language research, I would have thought that more significant issues are respect for the people we work with and their direct involvement in and empowerment through negotiations and collaborations about the goals, methods, training, operations, and outcomes of the research project. Protecting ourselves from “making a mess” is only the half of it. (I hasten to point out that Lise may have said all of these things but the journalist chose to pick out just these bits for the audience — anyone who has been interviewed will know how selective journalists can be.)
\nOn the topic of the IRBs, it quotes Alyson Reed, executive director of the LSA, as saying:<\/p>\n

“I think there has been frustration that most IRB’s really don’t get it when it comes to linguistic research, so this statement is also an educational tool”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a particular problem in the US where the IRBs tend to have been influenced by medical research models and hence demand anonymity, destruction of records after the research is completed, etc. Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with this kind of structure in the UK (yet), although SOAS has just announced it will be setting up a process and getting serious about research ethics (hopefully it won’t turn into a bureaucratic monster). But again, is being able to “educate” IRBs so important in the larger scheme of things when it comes to research ethics?
\nAs the article makes clear, the ethics statement is a first for the LSA, and rather late in the day compared to other social science researchers:<\/p>\n

“While anthropologists, psychologists and others have been debating research ethics for years, amid various proposals to amend ethics standards, the discussions have been a bit different at the Linguistic Society of America. The linguistics professors weren’t debating changes in an ethics code, but whether to have one in the first place.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is where my “Australia beats US” comes in. Discussions about research ethics among professional linguists in Australia took place back in the 1980’s, and the Australian Linguistic Society<\/a> (ALS) drew up its Statement on Ethics<\/a> in 1989. Its guidelines on Linguistic rights of Aboriginal and Islander Communities<\/a> were established in 1984, exactly 25 years before the LSA! In addition, one of the most powerful documents<\/a> [.pdf] setting out research ethics guidelines in indigenous studies was published by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in 2000 (at SOAS we consider it so significant that we provide a copy to everyone who attends our training courses).
\nSo, the LSA is catching up, but I personally think that their just released “Ethics Statement” still needs some work. You can comment on it at the LSA Ethics Discussion Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s my tabloid journalist headline for what is a serious, some would say momentous, development in the history of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), namely the adoption last month by the Executive Committee of the LSA of an Ethics Statement [.pdf]. Its Ethics Committee has been working on a draft statement for the past … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linguistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4494,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions\/4494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}