Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 11, 2025

Author Spotlight: Increasing TMS Accessibility Through Braiding Techniques for Diverse Hair Types
Published on: August 9, 2024
Ethno-racial categorisations for biomedical studies: the fair selection of research participants and population
Tomasz Żuradzki1, Joanna Karolina Malinowska2
1Institute of Philosophy & Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, ul. Grodzka 52, Kraków, 31-044 Poland.
Abstract:
We argue that there are neither scientific nor social reasons to require gathering ethno-racial data, as defined in the US legal regulations if researchers have no prior hypotheses as to how to connect this type of categorisation of human participants of clinical trials with any mechanisms that could explain alleged interracial health differences and guide treatment choice. Although we agree with the normative perspective embedded in the calls for the fair selection of participants for biomedical research, we demonstrate that current attempts to provide and elucidate the criteria for the fair selection of participants, in particular, taking into account ethno-racial categories, overlook important epistemic and normative challenges to implement the results of such race-sorting requirements. We discuss existing arguments for and against gathering ethno-racial statistics for biomedical research and present a new one that refers to the assumption that prediction is epistemically superior to accommodation. We also underline the importance of closer interaction between research ethics and the methodology of biomedicine in the case of population stratifications for medical research, which requires weighing non-epistemic values with methodological constraints.
More Related Videos
06:55Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting Propensity Score using the Military Health System Data Repository and National Death Index
Published on: January 8, 2020
14:56Sample Preparation to Bioinformatics Analysis of DNA Methylation: Association Strategy for Obesity and Related Trait Studies
Published on: May 6, 2022
Related Concept Videos
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Bias in Epidemiological Studies
Randomized Experiments
Simple randomization
Simple...
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
Surveys
Bias
In statistics, a sampling bias is created when a sample is collected from a population, and some members of the population are not as likely to be chosen as others (remember, each member...