In this paper we contribute to “sociology in bioethics” and help clarify the range of ways sociological work can contribute to ethics scholarship. We do this using a case study of an innovative neurotechnology, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and its use to attempt to diagnose and communicate with severely brain-injured patients. We compare empirical data from interviews with relatives of patients who have a severe brain injury with perspectives from mainstream bioethics scholars. We use the notion of an “ethical landscape” (...) as an analogy for the different ethical positions subjects can take—whereby a person’s position relative to the landscape makes a difference to the way they experience and interact with it. We show that, in comparison to studying abstract ethics “from above” the ethical landscape, which involves universal generalizations and global judgements, studying ethics empirically “from the ground,” within the ethical landscape foregrounds a more plural and differentiated picture. We argue it is important not to treat empirical ethics as secondary to abstract ethics, to treat on-the-ground perspectives as useful only insofar as they can inform ethics from above. Rather, empirical perspectives can illuminate the plural vantage points in ethical judgments, highlight the “lived” nature of ethical reasoning, and point to all ethical vantage points as being significant. This is of epistemic importance to normative ethics, since researchers who pay attention to the various positions in and trajectories through the ethical landscape are unlikely to think about ethics in terms of abstract agency—as can happen with top-down ethics—or to elide agency with the agency of policymakers. Moreover, empirical perspectives may have transformative implications for people on the ground, especially where focus on the potential harms and benefits they face brings their experiences and interests to the forefront of ethical and policy discussion. (shrink)

This study draws on interviews with forty-nine members of a biomedical research community in the UK that is involved in negotiating data sharing and access. During an interview, an interviewee used the words “ethical moment” to describe a confrontation between collaborators in relation to data sharing. In this article, I use this as a lens for thinking about relations between “the conceptual and the empirical” in a way that allows both analyst and actor to challenge the status quo and consider (...) other ethical possibilities. Drawing on actor network theory, I approach “the empirical” using the concepts of controversy and ontological uncertainty as methodological tools to tackle the problem of ethics. I suggest that these concepts also provide a bridge for understanding the ontological structure of the virtual and the actual, as described in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. While other science and technology studies scholars have sought to draw on Deleuze, this article addresses the integration of ethics and empirical research. It arises as a critical reaction to existing treatments of this problem as found in empirical ethics, especially in the sociology of bioethics, and indirectly in ANT texts. (shrink)

This paper presents findings from an empirical study that explored the meaning of ethics in the everyday work of neuroscientists. Observation and interviews were carried out in one neuroscience research group that was involved in bench-to-bedside translational research. We focus here specifically on the scientists’ perceptions of bioethics. Interviewees were often unfamiliar with bioethics as a discipline, particularly the more junior members of the group. Those who were aware of its existence largely viewed it as something distant from them, and (...) as either too abstract, not relevant or an alien imposition on their work. Some interviewees themselves pointed to the need for better ‘bridge building’ between ethical principles and real-world examples drawn from scientific practice, and we argue that this space is where a more empirically grounded ethics may be useful in terms of actually engaging scientists at both the bench and the bedside. (shrink)