Presentation Title: “In search of the Goldilocks method: Empirical bioethics and the spectre of scientization”

Abstract:

In this talk I consider the emergence of empirical bioethics, and its apparent acceptance as a mainstream methodological approach. In so doing I review some of the drivers that underpin its growing popularity, but issue a warning in the form of a concern about the scientisation of ethics. I offer a critique of scientisation and highlight the ways in which scientisation appears to be encroaching on bioethics, from the rise of systematic review, though the uncritical use of scientific fact in argument, through calls for the adoption of implementation science, to the use of quasi-scientific methods that play too great a role in ethical argument or even replace it entirely. I explore the ways in which applied bioethics scholarship may suffer if we submit to superficial scientisation and reliance on processual compliance. I then propose that an appropriate balance between scientific method and ethics requires the articulation of methodological rigour where possible, the adoption of process where helpful, and an acceptance of inarticulable methodological messiness where necessary.