On Wednesday morning, Hopkins professors, administrators, graduate students and undergraduate students gathered in Levering's Great Hall to listen to Carol Weil, a lawyer from the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Weil was there to deliver a lecture entitled "Human Subjects Protection and Social Science Research: A View from the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections."
She was invited by her friend, Hopkins political science professor Renée Marlin-Bennett, to speak to Marlin-Bennett's class on "Political Inquiry: How to Conduct Research in Political Science and International Studies."
However, the lecture also drew attendees with an interest in social science research from throughout the university.
Weil spoke about how the United States government created the Office of Human Research Protections in 1981 to oversee research at various institutions across the country.
The office that Weil represents works to ensure that all research involving human subjects funded by the Department of Health and Human Services is conducted with appropriate ethical concern and protection for those subjects.
Certain research institutions, including Hopkins, have agreed to have all scientific investigations involving human subjects overseen by this office.
According to Weil, the movement to protect human subjects came about after World War II in reaction to atrocities committed by the Nazis.
Other events in science, such as the ethical breaches in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, made it clear that the United States needed to be more proactive in protecting the rights of human subjects.
Weil quoted Immanuel Kant, reminding those gathered in the Great Hall that a man should not be treated as a means to an end but that "each human being is an end to himself."
She went on to clarify how ethical guidelines apply to research in the social sciences.
She explained that a human subject is "A living individual about whom an investigator conducting research obtains data through intervention or interaction with the individual and identifiable private information about the individual."
That means, she continued, that if you "sit behind a bush all day waiting for a homeless person to sit down and then watch people's reactions to him, they're not subjects because you didn't interact with them."
However, if a researcher manipulates people's environment, for example by hiring a homeless person to sit near by, that would be enough to count as interaction with those who walk past.
Weil also discussed what researchers could do to ensure compliance with ethical regulations.
She explained that "Informed consent is a process, more than a document," and detailed how to comply with that process.
She also addressed many researchers practical concerns, describing the circumstances under which they need to submit their research to their Institutional Review Board (IRB), the body at each research institution responsible for overseeing their research.
She also listed the circumstances where they would be exempt from doing so.
Representatives from the Homewood IRB and the Office of the Vice President of General Counsel were present to answer attendees' specific questions about Hopkins own internal research policies.
The event closed with an opportunity for students and faculty to bring up inquiries of their own for their personal research.
