Everyone working on emotional development (see here for a previous discussion on maternal deprivation studies using monkeys) has read about the devastating toll life in the Romanian orphanage system exacts. This Aeon Magazine piece discusses the ethics of investigation, intervention, and policy advocacy in a study comparing foster care and orphanages.
The Bucharest project study differs from most randomised control trials done in disadvantaged countries, Millum explained. Those tend to be studies of a new treatment — an antiretroviral drug to treat HIV in Africans, say. It’s ethical to put people through those trials because the researchers don’t know from the outset whether the drug will work. ‘The hope is that the new knowledge you get out of the study is then going to be useful in informing practice,’ Millum said.
However, in the Bucharest project’s case, the researchers already knew from a multitude of studies in Western countries that foster care is better for children than institutionalised care — that’s why Western countries have so few institutions. So although the study could potentially answer lots of new, open questions, the one that justified its existence had already been answered.
Still, that older research had not influenced Romanian social policy; many government officials did not trust the idea of foster parents, and believed that institutions provided adequate care. That, plus the fact that the project had close connections with the government, lent credence to the argument that the study could change policy, Millum explained. ‘The answers to the question the study asked could have changed practice.’
But realistically, how likely was it that the study would change anything? And once the study was over, were the scientists supposed to then become advocates for those policy changes?
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