Research and the Ethics of 'Impact'

An important part of my future research focus is on the ethics of research itself and the ethics of public engagement – who should we be engaging with and for what purpose?

Informing this is a view that research itself has a moral purpose – it is an ethical activity. That’s why, partially at least, we have a framework of research ethics for that activity.

I used to teach media ethics and one question which framed the whole course was whether there was any such thing as media ethics? The answer was, only if the media as a practice has a moral purpose, and the rest of the course was an attempt to find that out. But I had to say to those students taking the course who wanted to go into PR that, no, there was no professional ethics for them, because PR does not have a moral purpose, just as you can’t have professional ethics in the arms trade, the tobacco industry, the oil industry … well, the list goes on.

So what is the moral purpose of our research? At the minimal level this is given to us by the charitable status of our universities. Our research must give rise to public benefit, and any private benefit has to be incidental. The public benefit requirement is, in the end, minimal in that charity law is satisfied if our research is made public, if it is shared. But there are hints here of a more robust conception of public benefit in the charity law requirement, and I would certainly want to go further in my personal understanding of the moral purpose of research. Our research should have a positive impact on the public good, one that includes those traditionally excluded from that public good. The Charity Commission’s view is that the way we disseminate our research must “not be unreasonably restricted or excluding those in poverty from the opportunity to benefit”.

Talk of impact is timely, of course, given the importance of impact in the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework. And I’m all for impact, given the words engraved on a tombstone in Highgate Cemetery. But the question is what sort of impact and where?

Apart from its crucial impact on our teaching, the kind of impact I’m looking for is on critical social movements in their struggle against barriers of social exclusion. I have no problem in talking about this engagement in terms of knowledge exchange, as I think theory and activism need to learn from each other. But increasingly the sharing of our research, the act of public engagement, is being placed in a framework described as the ‘knowledge economy’, talked of in terms of ‘intellectual capital’, and being put up for ‘commercialization’ and ‘exploitation’.

Here I begin to lose track. If there is a knowledge economy we need to think about what sort of economy we’re talking about. Certainly, the collapse of competitive market economies around the world and the catastrophic consequences that is having on ordinary people’s lives – caused by the sort of sleep walking thoughtlessness Hannah Arendt warned against – should make us very cautious about seeing our research as capital for exploitation in that kind of economic marketplace.

We should be thinking about alternative models for the marketplace of ideas, perhaps a cooperative one, or perhaps we need to move away from the idea of the marketplace altogether and think in terms of the public ‘forum’. The primary requirement of the moral principles of research, and again of our charitable status, is not that we make money out of research, but that we make it publicly available – we share it. A ‘knowledge economy’ which exploits our ‘intellectual capital’ may not be the best way of doing that.

One reason for caution here is, of course, that the capitalist market makes no moral judgment – it will trade anything with anybody if there’s a profit to be made. Ethics always has to be imposed on the market from outside. And so public engagement itself has to have an ethical framework. We have to ask what ethical purpose our research and expertise will be put to. We cannot be so anxious about the commercial exploitation of our intellectual capital that we fail to ask that question. I’ve always argued that our social justice obligations don’t stop at the national border. Well, our research ethics obligations don’t stop at the university gate.

We are being urged by government to engage with business. It’s a theme running through the Welsh Assembly’s “For our Future” document on its Higher Education Strategy, which talks of “exploitation” of knowledge “to feed wealth creation and business growth”.

But we have to remember that what the business person wants from us, if anything, is help in getting rich, or richer. The argument seems to be that helping a local business increase its profits will help regenerate the local community, but this is an assumption which is not born out by the evidence – to stick to Wales, have a look at Cardiff Bay then wander over to Butetown.

There is no necessary connection between private profit and regeneration, and so rather than assume it, we have to ask our business ‘partners’ whether our relationship will contribute to the project of regeneration, and if they don’t have an answer, perhaps we shouldn’t be in that relationship, and indeed again our charitable status says we shouldn’t.

The Charity Commission is so concerned about the push to exploitation by government that it recently issued clarification and advice to universities. It was anxious to say that charitable status and commercialization of research are not necessarily incompatible, but the fact that it felt the clarification was necessary shows its unease with what is happening in higher education. Its advice emphasizes that private benefit has to be incidental and public benefit paramount, and: “There cannot be an automatic presumption either of public benefit or that private benefit is incidental.” And: “Research must be justified and undertaken for the public benefit and not solely or mainly for self-interest or for private or commercial consumption.”

The Welsh Assembly Government “For our Future” document talks of the “two pillars of social justice and supporting a buoyant economy” – but we know there is no necessary connection between booming or buoyant economies and social justice: that connection has to be made, has to be fought for, and perhaps we are one of the agencies who need to make it and fight for it.

In all of this debate the burden of justification has fallen upon us as academics– we have to justify our ‘usefulness’ to the business community. But if there is to be a connection between economic wealth and social justice, and if we are obliged to ensure that there is a public benefit arising from our research over and above any incidental private benefit, there are questions we must ask of our potential business partners.

What universities have to face up to is that the push towards doing business with business gives rise to an enormous ethical tension around the question of interests. Businesses will fund research if it is in their interests, but our research must be in the public benefit, and we cannot presume that the interests of the business and the benefit of the public coincide. There are all sorts of cases where they clearly do not. Some universities have ethical codes of conduct which simply rule out any funding or any support from any organization involved with the tobacco industry – the University of Sunderland and the University of Portsmouth both take this stance, for example. But with government pushing us towards closer relations with business, and with institutions also looking for those closer ties, the pressure on the individual researcher or team of researchers may grow, regardless of ethics policies. And that tension between business interest and public interest will become all the more intense. The tobacco industry is an extreme example of a general ethical problem.

And so it becomes all the more crucial to ask, if we are entering into a knowledge ‘economy’ where intellectual ‘capital’ is to be ‘exploited’ – on whose behalf is it being exploited? To whose benefit? In whose interests? What sort of economy is this? Is it one that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of those who already possess it, and re-enforces social exclusion and injustice? Is it our purpose to make the strong stronger, the rich richer, the powerful more powerful? Or should we be doing the opposite?

An institutional ethics policy is, of course, is only part of the answer. The more important part is that we as individual researchers retain our moral compass, whatever is happening around us.

To not think about the ethical dimension of what we are doing, is to be drawn into the realm of the anti-theoretical, to be drawn into a black hole where there is no ethics. And the collapse of the banking and financial sector and the enormous cost of this for ordinary people around the world shows us what this kind of ‘thoughtlessness’ can lead to. Let us not be sleepwalkers.

We do not do research in order to make money, for ourselves or for the institution, and research itself should not be valued or ranked in terms of its potential for commercial exploitation. We do research in order to have a positive benefit on the public good, and sometimes that benefit will simply be that it changes how people think.

Of course, we have to raise money to fund our research activity. We must engage in the moral enterprise of research, and we need money to be able do that. But that need must not change the ethical framework or moral purpose of our research.

These are difficult times and they are going to get more difficult. But history shows that it is during difficult times that ethical commitments become more important than ever.

In my role in supporting those beginning their research careers, I’ve offered the following advice:

1. Decide your research identity – who you want to be, what you want to be recognised as: you need to be recognised as an expert, and you cannot be an expert in all things.

2. Keep your direction, whatever the pressure to react to research bids and opportunities which have money attached to them – keep your balance.

3. And amidst all the pressures, above all keep your dignity.

And today I’ll add another dimension, another piece of advice which I think applies to universities as institutions as well as to individual researchers: 


4. Keep the clarity of your moral vision, because that moral vision will act as the foundation for your identity, your direction and your dignity.

We must not allow ourselves to be fragmented into egoistic, competitive individuals by being drawn into a particular model of the market of ideas – let us remember that best way to lay the foundation for our own research career is to support and encourage and cooperate with others in the development of theirs.

As Hannah Arendt observes: “The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge: it is the ability to tell right from wrong…”. (The Life of the Mind, Volume 1, p. 193).