Critiquing the ethics review process in the 2019 Nieuwoudt et al. study on the impact of age and education on cognitive functioning among coloured South African women
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2021
TITLE AUTHOR(S): A.Strode, W.Freedman, Z.Essack, H.Van Rooyen
KEYWORDS: COGNITIVE PROCESSES, COGNITIVE PROCESSES, COLOURED PEOPLE, ETHICS OF SCIENCE, WESTERN CAPE PROVINCE, WOMEN
DEPARTMENT: Public Health, Societies and Belonging (HSC)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 11998
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/16049
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/16049
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
In April 2019, Nieuwoudt et al. published an article on the impact of age and education on cognitive functioning among coloured women in the Western Cape Province, South Africa (SA). The study reported that coloured women in SA have increased risk for low cognitive functioning, as a result of limited education and unhealthy lifestyles. The article was widely criticised, and the journal subsequently withdrew the piece. It was argued that the study was unethical as it perpetuated racial stereotypes through its failure to recognise the distinction between race and ethnicity when undertaking biological research on a race group. The study had received ethical approval, which raised pertinent questions about the ethics review process. This article looks at (i) the role of research ethics committees (RECs); and (ii) the normative framework within which ethics committees operate. It avers that an understanding of the ethical issues of scientific validity, fair subject selection and minimising harms must be viewed in the light of the complex social issues surrounding the construction of coloured identity in SA. The article finds that the REC should have considered this study unapprovable, because its methodology was based on racist assumptions, and its focus on one race or ethnic group posed social risks for that community. The REC ought to have interrogated why researchers were unclear in their distinction between race and ethnicity, and have been mindful of race being a social rather than a biological construct.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Thinking ethically about women, power and land in South Africa
- Race, welfare, and 'correctional' education: the experience of indigent 'coloured' boys under apartheid
- Durban's waterfront: regulating casual labour?
- Ethical and social dilemmas in community-based controlled trials in situations of poverty: a view from a South African project
- Revised manual for the Grover-Counter Scale of cognitive development (GCS)
- Cognitive skills assessment and instruction: developing an indigenous model to empower educators and learners
- Embedding cognitive education in curriculum 2005: the role of the teacher
- Report on the standardisation of the Grover-Counter Scale (GCS) of cognitive development
- Audit of pension pay points in South Africa
- Problems and possibilities in multilingual classrooms in the Western Cape
- Living with 'salvation': the correctional institutionalisation of 'coloured boys' in the 1950's
- Child sexual abuse in Atlantis: a research report
- Child sexual abuse in Atlantis: the scale of the problem
- Self-dealing and other manifestations of conflict of interest
- Unethical conduct, misadministration/mismanagement in South Africa's contemporary civil service: daunting challenges to management
- Moving beyond the sledgehammer: a personal response to the HSRC's research ethics policy
- Rethinking professional ethics
- Manifestations of unethical conduct in public institutions
- A culture of negative work ethic
- Senior public functionaries' collusion in unethical activities