• Question: have you ever stopped an experiment because of ethnicity problems?

    Asked by Rhys M to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 4 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      Not specifically stop an experiment, as such, no. The way I work doesn’t really involve direct experimentation, since I create software tools for scientific data. That said, I did find myself really frustrated recently when I was putting together slides for a talk – I searched for images of people, and the search results for the software I was using only returned pictures of white people. Eventually I did find a nice set of images to use, but it wasn’t as easy as it should be. (If you want, you can see the final image set I used on slide 8 here: https://figshare.com/articles/_/5570278 )

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      I don’t really come up against ethics problems (whether something is right or wrong, ok or not) very often in my research. That said, I once wanted to go to South Africa to see how local people used a plant for medicine, but there were so many forms to fill in I ran out of time! I didn’t mind too much though – it’s really important to get permission for things like that. Some scientists have learned about medicinal plants from local people, then gone away, made and patented a medicine from the plant, and made loads of money from it without sharing with the people who helped them in the first place. Scientists who do this are known as biopirates and, although being a biopirate *sounds* unbelievably cool, it’s really an incredibly unfair, uncool thing to do. Don’t be a biopirate, kids. Fill in your paperwork.

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      No, I’ve never had to stop an experiment because of a ethics problem… so far. In my work, I use lasers and glass fibres, so there’s not much danger of being unethical. It depends what they are used for. Some of our optical fibres will be tested in people eventually, so I imagine some issues will come up then.

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 12 Nov 2017:

      It’s a good question and a very important one.
      I work with mice, so it’s very, very important to us that we treat them right.
      We get lots of training to work with animals, so we know how to treat them the right way.
      We have help from Home Office, who tell us which experiments we can do and who inspect our work regularly.
      We also have a vet, and animal welfare officers who help us look after the animals and make sure our work is up to their standard.
      We also have animal technicians who help us check the animals every day.
      It’s great we have them all helping us!
      If any of us is unhappy with how an animal is doing, then we end the experiment we’re doing on it.

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