History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
Nicolas Léchopier
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / IHPST
Epidemiology, Marketing and Research Finalities
The aim of the epidemiological research is to describe and to understand the health determinations in human populations. Such an objective implies epidemiologists to collect, store and analyse individual health data. European norms (and specifically French norms) hold that to justify the use of personal data, there must be a scientific protocol which could lead into reliable results. Experts committees which evaluate the protocols with respect to the confidentiality break’s ethical cost define a scientific protocol in terms of finality and methodology : to be considered as a scientific research, an epidemiological research protocol should be centred around a scientific hypothesis (e.g. What are the relations between a drug’s original indication and the prescribers and consumers practices ? What are the genetic factors involved in the efficiency of a drug ? etc.) and should use the appropriate methodology (calculus of the number of subjects, appropriate statistical methodology, etc.). In the daily work of a expertise committee, the demarcation between what is a good scientific protocol and what is not seems to be quite clear and operational. But to define what is not a good scientific research lies on an ambiguity : it can be a low quality scientific protocol (i.e. amateur research), or a non-scientific protocol (i.e. marketing). My contribution to this workshop is about the philosophical and sociological aspects of the demarcation criteria’s dark side. The social norms about the scientific justification of collecting personal health data apply to highly contextualised research practices, and call for a conceptual clarification.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006