Adrian Owen’s research raises a range of ethical issues, in particular issues that could be described as ‘socially sensitive’. Ethical issues, in relation to research, concern questions about the way participants are treated. In the case of Owen’s research, the participants are the patients in the grey zone and their families. If you were on an ethical committee to determine whether his research should be permitted, what questions would you ask?
Delving deeper, we might be concerned with how the results could or will be used, i.e. socially sensitive research where there are ‘potential consequences or implications, either directly for the participants in the research or for the class of individuals represented by the research’ (Sieber and Stanley 1988). Owen’s research seems to fit that description.
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