Equitable Research Partnerships instead of Helicopter Research
Watch the Webinar: Equitable Research Partnerships
by Doris Schroeder, Charles Weijer, Syntia Nchangwi and Samuel Ujewe
21st century research is global for two reasons. First, the mobility of researchers has increased significantly. Today, Switzerland hosts more foreign-born than Swiss scientists (56%) whilst Canada (47%) and Australia (45%) are approaching similar figures (Czaika and Orazbayev, 2018). Meanwhile, about 40% of India-born researchers work abroad (ibid.). The second reason why 21st century research is increasingly global is because research challenges themselves are increasingly global. According to a Nature article, “we need diverse teams to tackle global problems such as pandemics... COVID-19 has provided a timely reminder that it can be done — and of the enormous rewards it can bring” (Nature 2021) The Nature editor also stresses that standing on the shoulders of the giant, solitary scientist is not the right metaphor for today’s successes. Instead, “[t]he future lies in standing on the shoulders of crowds” (ibid.)
Standing on the shoulders of crowds implies involving large numbers of researchers and research participants in various regions around the world. To do this equitably requires a change to mind-sets and a change of established practices that have come under scrutiny for being unfair, exploitative, and non-inclusive.
In particular, the practice of ethics dumping needs to end. Ethics dumping is the export of unethical research practices from a higher-income to a lower-income region (Schroeder et al 2018) as in the following three examples:
· Undertaking research in Liberia without research ethics approval (Tegli 2018).
· Adding a no-treatment-control-arm to a study in India, which would be prohibited in the country of the research funder, the US (Srinivasan et al 2018).
· Extracting valuable resources without benefit sharing, also known as “helicopter research,” as in a case where genetic samples of impoverished Chinese villagers were commercialized in the US with no benefits for the Chinese research participants, their communities or their country (Zhao and Zhang 2018).
Whilst these examples may seem to be obviously wrong, they might be based on harder to shift mind-sets of solitary giants unused to working equitably with crowds. In 2015, a UK-based paleobiologist dismissed questions about his team’s lack of collaboration with local researchers in South America saying: “I mean, do you want me also to have a Black person on the team for ethnicity reasons, and a cripple and a woman, and maybe a homosexual too just for a bit of all round balance?” (Elbein 2021).
The potential benefits of global science and research collaborations may be huge, but not if they destabilize precariously balanced trust in intercultural co-operations and instead replicate long out-dated behavioural patterns from the last centuries. Some noticeable progress has been made in setting up equitable global research partnerships but more needs to be done and every global research stakeholder has a role to play.
Constructing and sustaining equitable research partnerships is complex and filled with ethical and logistical challenges. How can such partnerships be built successfully? What obstacles do junior and senior researchers face? And what institutional structures must be in place to buttress these partnerships?
References
Czaika M and Orazbayev S (2018) Measuring Global Scientific Mobility, https://www.oecd.org/migration/forum-migration-statistics/2.Czaika.pdf
Elbein A (2021) Decolonizing the Hunt for Dinosaurs and Other Fossils, New York Times, 22 March 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/science/dinosaurs-fossils-colonialism.html.
Nature (2021) Editorial: Research collaborations bring big rewards: the world needs more, 16 June 2021, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01581-z
Schroeder D, Cook J, Hirsch H, Fenet S and Muthuswamy V (Eds.). (2018). Ethics Dumping - Case Studies from North South Research Collaborations. Springer.
Srinivasan S, Johari V and Jesani A (2018). Cervical Cancer Screening in India. In Schroeder D, Cook J, Hirsch H, Fenet S and Muthuswamy V (Eds.), Ethics Dumping - Case Studies from North-South Research Collaborations (pp.33-48). Springer.
Tegli J (2018). Seeking retrospective approval for a study in resource-constrained Liberia. In Schroeder D, Cook J, Hirsch H, Fenet S and Muthuswamy V (Eds.), Ethics Dumping - Case Studies from North-South Research Collaborations (pp.115-119). Springer.
Zhao Y and Zhang W (2018). An International Collaborative Genetic Research Project Conducted in China. In Schroeder D, Cook J, Hirsch H, Fenet S and Muthuswamy V (Eds.), Ethics Dumping - Case Studies from North-South Research Collaborations (pp.71-78). Springer. pp.71-80.
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