The risk-benefit task of research ethics committees: An evaluation of current approaches and the need to incorporate decision studies methods

By looking at decision studies, we see that both procedure-level approaches conflate the various risk-benefit tasks, i.e., risk-benefit assessment, risk-benefit evaluation, risk treatment, and decision making. This conflation makes the RECs’ risk-benefit task confusing, if not impossible. We further realize that RECs are not meant to do all the risk-benefit tasks; instead, RECs are meant to evaluate risks and benefits, appraise risk treatment suggestions, and make the final decision.As such, research ethics would benefit from looking beyond the procedure-level approaches and allowing disciplines like decision studies to be involved in the discourse on RECs’ risk-benefit task.