Federal regulations control the use of animals in research in the life sciences to ensure that ethical issues are dealt with in planning and carrying out experiments using animals. Most of the experiments are conducted in laboratory settings after review by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs), required by law to review and approve every study involving live vertebrates. However, the existing language is written broadly and also applies to field studies. The latter are conducted under very different conditions and typically focus on the well-being of free-living populations or species, making the existing ethical guidelines problematic. The IACUSs often find themselves struggling to apply the language and prescribed methodologies of laboratory research to the questions and methodologies of field biological research. This can result in two types of undesirable consequence: first, studies that should be performed would be inappropriately curtailed; and second, studies that should be avoided might erroneously be approved. This research addresses this problem by 1) identifying appropriate ethical guidelines for field biological research; 2) devising a methodology for instructing the current and next generation of field researchers on this topic at a model institution; 3) evaluating the effectiveness of this methodology and modifying it based on the findings; and 4) generating materials for national testing of the program.
The broader impact is substantial to the host institution which is implementing an Ethics Initiative aimed at encouraging discussion of ethical issues among students and faculty and to all research institutions with IACUCs asked to review field studies with animals.
