Research codes and contracts should protect indigenous and marginalised communities from exploitation and instead encourage their voices to be heard. In practice, however, they can have undesirable effects, argues anthropologist Stasja Koot. Based on his experiences of fieldwork in southern Africa, he wrote an article about it with fellow scientists and people from local communities. It appeared in the authoritative science journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
That ethical rules apply to scientific research among marginalized communities is justified, argues Koot, associate professor of Sociology of Development of Change at Wageningen University & Research. “Rules are needed, for example, to prevent research being conducted in places around the world in a way that would never be accepted at home. Or to prevent helicopter research, where scientists from high-income areas fly to low-income countries, do their research there and leave again without having involved local scientists or communities in the research.”
Koot may subscribe to the ethical idea, but he also sees that codes of conduct and contracts often do not work. Perhaps the most important hurdle is raised by the relevant authorities in the country where research is being conducted, he argues. He experiences this regularly during field research in southern Africa: “You are then given a contract to take to local representatives. As part of the research, we wanted to talk to indeginous people from the San population. The local representatives told us that we would only get permission if we went to talk to people designated by them. Here we found that a tool meant to promote ethical research was actually being misused to keep people out.”
As a second objection, Koot sees the requirement for research to have local impact. “Like any scientist, I like to see my research have impact. But I also know that by far most scientific research is fundamental research. Pfizer could only bring the corona vaccine to market thanks to fundamental knowledge built up many years before. I have been involved in research into land claims by a population group in northern Namibia. That claim was more likely to succeed thanks to historical papers by early anthropologists and ethnologists. I therefore find the demand that any research must have an immediate impact a bit simplistic.”
Centre for Space, Place and Society 