Reflections on completing my International Research Board (IRB) training

The dictum that "research studies are anticipated to make progress toward important, generalizable knowledge" may be fairly obvious but I also found it to be useful in how I think through my many ideas about the particular "slice" of inquiry I will focus on for my dissertation.  It seems like there will be an art to identifying a specific, appropriately narrowly focused research question whose outcomes will also be more broadly relevant.  Since the importance of children in creating sustainable communities is a running thread in my research interests, the portion of this training course focused on persons with diminished autonomy needing additional protections was particularly interesting to me.  I may not actually end up involving children directly in my research, but if I do I am glad to have an early awareness of special provisions that may be required to ensure their well-being.  More broadly, I continue to be horrified by the cruelty that humans are capable of, both towards one another and to other living beings.  I noted that the Nuremberg code requires animal experimentation to precede human experimentation, which is understandable and often appropriate for medical research.  However, it was unclear whether the next clause "all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury should be avoided" also applies to animals - I think not.  This is deeply troubling to me, but I do greatly appreciate that Prescott applies the IRB process to non-human animal participants.  If anyone is interested in a VERY intense but powerful book that deals, in small part, with our history of research on animals, check out "A Language Older than Words" by Derrick Jensen.   Looking at the history of formal protections for human research participants also triggered a line of thinking about whether it is a part of the human process for things to have to get so extremely bad before we start to put policies, laws and action into place to make them right?  Formal, national and international protections for human research participants were not necessary prior to the Nazi War Crime, the Syphilis study and other heinous acts.  Similarly atrocious environmental incidences spawned the environmental movement and the creation of environmental protection laws and policies.  Clearly there are still human rights and environmental protection violations taking place all over the world on a regular basis, but I wonder if our greater collective awareness about the need for beneficence, justice and respect is slowly creating a sea change towards a better model for how we treat each other, those we inhabit the earth with, and the earth at large?