Proctor's Idea on Ethical Responsibility

This week's reading (Proctor) challenged our preconceptions in several ways. One of these was that the medical experimentation done by Nazi scientists was not 'real science' - Proctor points out that it was, indeed, science, and that the true problem lies not with a handful of badly behaved doctors, but with the way an ideology built into a country's legal and social structures enabled such activities to take place.
These days, research on humans and animals is governed by strict guidelines and overseen by ethics approval committees. Those of you studying Vet Science may already be familiar with the Australian Code for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes (Links to an external site.). Those in psychology or medical science might have come across the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (Links to an external site.). At the University of Sydney, research is also governed by the Research Code of ConductLinks to an external site. and research on people is managed by the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC).
Yet one of the trickiest questions to answer (and one we touched on in lectures) is where should ultimate responsibility lie for ethical research behaviour? Should it be with the individual scientist or with the institution at which they do research? What if an ethics committee approves research that is unethical? Could the approval process itself remove responsibility from the individual researcher, making such practices more likely?
Your task
This week, we want to know what YOU think.
Your task this week is to write a short opinion piece (about 300 words) on whether you think responsibility should be managed at an individual level or at an institutional level. If your answer is 'both', you must specify which aspects should be managed at each level, and how gaps and overlaps should be managed.