In the Media: Should Scientists Be Their Own Guinea Pigs?
Many scientists experiment on themselves – half admitted to having done so in a survey conducted earlier this year. But can scientists who are their own guinea pigs – for example, fasting to study its health effects, taking nutritional supplements in anti-aging studies, or taking an experimental drug -- remain unbiased? In an interview with Elemental, Hastings Center research scholar Karen Maschke raises ethical concerns. “We have a scientific enterprise in place that values good data and well-designed studies so that you can be confident that at least the methods were reliable, the findings are valid, and people can reproduce the studies and get similar results. That’s the ethos of the scientific method,” says Maschke, who is also the editor of Ethics & Human Research, a Hastings Center journal. “Someone doing experiments on themselves to some extent undermines that enterprise.” Read the article.
|
