AAAS Meeting Explores Ways to Improve Ethics Panels that Oversee Social Science Research

The ethics boards that oversee federally funded studies involving human subjects have become part of the research landscape since the 1970s. But some researchers in the social and behavioral sciences complain that the boards—established in response to abuses in biomedical research—too often take a heavy-handed approach toward survey research and other social science projects that pose minimal risk, if any, to those who participate.

By AAAS, USA.

Technology Policy Resource.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—The news came in mid-September that Arctic sea ice had shrunk to its second smallest size on record, but even before that, 2008 had given many Alaskans a troubling sense that things were somehow out-of-kilter. Record summer rainfall caused damaging floods and swamped backyard vegetable gardens. Floods and high gas prices disrupted subsistence hunting and fishing out in the Bush. And schools in Alaska's urban areas reported a surprising surge in students, apparently because families are moving from rural villages

By AAAS, USA..

Climate change Policy Resource.