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Ethics, Knowledge and Truth in Sports Research
The study of sport is characterised by its inter-disciplinarity, with researchers drawing on apparently incompatible research traditions and ethical benchmarks in the natural sciences and the social sciences, depending on their area of specialisation. In this groundbreaking study, Graham McFee argues that sound high-level research into sport requires a sound rationale for one’s methodological choices, and that such a rationale requires an understanding of the connection between the practicalities of researching sport and the philosophical assumptions which underpin them. By examining touchstone principles in research methodology, such as the contested ‘gold standard’ of voluntary informed consent in the natural sciences and the postmodern denial of ‘truth’ in the social sciences, McFee demonstrates that epistemology and ethics are inextricably linked. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the laboratory to the sports field, McFee explores the concepts of ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ in sports research and makes a powerful case for a philosophical deepening of our approach to method and methodology in sport. This book is important reading for all advanced students and researchers working in sport, exercise and related disciplines.
236 pages, Paperback
First published December 11, 2009
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November 20, 2017
About 20 years ago when I shifted the focus of my scholarly work from urban history to sport (there was a link in movements of popular political resistance) I was unsettled by just how much the world of sport studies – sociology and the like – was shaped, framed and close to determined by a simplistic scientistic vision of sport and the study of that social/cultural practice. I think I would have been able to make much more sense of what was going on had I had this engaging, provocative and challenging book to read. What is more, it took me five years to get around to buying it and another two for it to make it to the top of my to-read pile – it should have been much faster.
McFee’s case is two-fold; first that we profoundly misunderstand the nature of social science research in sport, deferring to a poorly conceptualised vision of science in the study of sport. This is not just a poorly understood notion of what science is but also of the way that notion infects and inflects the way we do research in and into sport. The second, then, is that a better understanding of science in/and sport would result in different ways of doing that research.
McFee argues forcefully that all scholarly research is a quest for truth – this is not an always in existence, unchanging Truth, but a contextually specific, shaped by the inquiry sense of truth. Note, also, that this is a very specific sense of truth – not some poorly conceptualised sense of relativism or an anything goes, there is no truth nihilism, but a truth formed by the dialogues of question and answer that make up our way of doing things. (I accept that this might seem a bit odd to those who aren’t philosophers, or who don’t engage with philosophical debates.) This therefore means that McFee rejects of a simplistic notion of sport-as/and-science in favour of a more nuanced approach derived from work by Thomas Kuhn, but surprisingly (for many social scientists) argues that Kuhn does not apply in any obvious way to social science – at least in the way we social scientists often use one of his key concepts – the ‘paradigm’, which he quite correctly notes is incorrectly used by most social scientists. This, for me, is really exciting stuff: McFee provides a framework for me to make sense of my disquiet about how and why I feel so uncomfortable with so much of the way we seem to understand both sport & sport science.
There are two things that flow from this analysis, in addition to the vital point that to conceive of research as able to be classified as quantitative or qualitative: the view that we can classify research on the basis of the kind of data/evidence we use has long struck me as weak – it is intellectually flawed in that it fails (to my mind) to consider the types of knowledge we are involved with, and secondly it is conceptually flawed in that it does not consider the type or style of research design.
This rejection of the conventional ways of sorting research means that McFee makes to crucial points. First, that the nature of research as a question and answer process means that to be effective mixed methods research designs are only effective when each method selected is capable of answer the same question. This is a vital extension of the position that the question determines the method(s). The second, from my point of view as a research ethicist is much more important and suggests that we need to significantly rethink the relationships within projects between the researched and the researcher, with all the ethics implications that has.
His ethics case turns on three points. First, voluntary informed consent is not so significant that as to preclude attention to any other kind of research. There are some who hold it is a ‘gold standard’; that is get VIC right and that’s all you need to do (from my point of view, VIC is crucial but only because getting it right means that we’re more likely to have taken account of all those others thing that make any research project challenging because getting VIC right means that we are likely to be more empathetically engaged with the wellbeing and views of the researched.
The second point, in a sense the consequence of the first about the unattainability of VIC, is that most sport-centric social science research is in some way covert. That is to say that part of doing research that conceives of research participants/subject as humans of the whole (not as an assemblage of body parts means that we cannot fully inform those people of everything that might happen as a consequence of their joining our research project, so there must be some deception that takes place. This has very clear implications for what we mean when we say that our participants are fully informed and have freely consented.
The third consequence of the epistemological and methodological discussion then poses profound questions for the researcher’s responsibility to the researched’s community, including in the process of finalising ‘data’ but not the analysis and interpretation. It is this aspect that many might find a challenge, not because of what McFee sees as responsibilities to communities but because the consequence is that those we are researching must be kept at a slight distance – so he insists that the researched are subjects, not participants: it is a compelling argument. It is not an always-and-in-every-case argument – much of the book turns around this principle of exceptionlessness.
To my mind, the consequences of this discussion of ethics are profound in terms of how we conceive of research in and around sport, where that research deals with talk (that is people as complete people). Equally, the rejection of scientism profoundly influences how we conceive of research in and around sport as dealing with whole people (which must sound a bit odd – but the contrast is with those scientists who research individual point parts of bodies).
In short, this is a profound challenge to the dominant models of sport science, and one that deserves a wide readership. It has been critically well received by many in my field, but I suspect that it needs a much wider readership by active researcher. This is definitely something for my grad students, and for all of us – but brace yourself for some rigorous philosophyising.
McFee’s case is two-fold; first that we profoundly misunderstand the nature of social science research in sport, deferring to a poorly conceptualised vision of science in the study of sport. This is not just a poorly understood notion of what science is but also of the way that notion infects and inflects the way we do research in and into sport. The second, then, is that a better understanding of science in/and sport would result in different ways of doing that research.
McFee argues forcefully that all scholarly research is a quest for truth – this is not an always in existence, unchanging Truth, but a contextually specific, shaped by the inquiry sense of truth. Note, also, that this is a very specific sense of truth – not some poorly conceptualised sense of relativism or an anything goes, there is no truth nihilism, but a truth formed by the dialogues of question and answer that make up our way of doing things. (I accept that this might seem a bit odd to those who aren’t philosophers, or who don’t engage with philosophical debates.) This therefore means that McFee rejects of a simplistic notion of sport-as/and-science in favour of a more nuanced approach derived from work by Thomas Kuhn, but surprisingly (for many social scientists) argues that Kuhn does not apply in any obvious way to social science – at least in the way we social scientists often use one of his key concepts – the ‘paradigm’, which he quite correctly notes is incorrectly used by most social scientists. This, for me, is really exciting stuff: McFee provides a framework for me to make sense of my disquiet about how and why I feel so uncomfortable with so much of the way we seem to understand both sport & sport science.
There are two things that flow from this analysis, in addition to the vital point that to conceive of research as able to be classified as quantitative or qualitative: the view that we can classify research on the basis of the kind of data/evidence we use has long struck me as weak – it is intellectually flawed in that it fails (to my mind) to consider the types of knowledge we are involved with, and secondly it is conceptually flawed in that it does not consider the type or style of research design.
This rejection of the conventional ways of sorting research means that McFee makes to crucial points. First, that the nature of research as a question and answer process means that to be effective mixed methods research designs are only effective when each method selected is capable of answer the same question. This is a vital extension of the position that the question determines the method(s). The second, from my point of view as a research ethicist is much more important and suggests that we need to significantly rethink the relationships within projects between the researched and the researcher, with all the ethics implications that has.
His ethics case turns on three points. First, voluntary informed consent is not so significant that as to preclude attention to any other kind of research. There are some who hold it is a ‘gold standard’; that is get VIC right and that’s all you need to do (from my point of view, VIC is crucial but only because getting it right means that we’re more likely to have taken account of all those others thing that make any research project challenging because getting VIC right means that we are likely to be more empathetically engaged with the wellbeing and views of the researched.
The second point, in a sense the consequence of the first about the unattainability of VIC, is that most sport-centric social science research is in some way covert. That is to say that part of doing research that conceives of research participants/subject as humans of the whole (not as an assemblage of body parts means that we cannot fully inform those people of everything that might happen as a consequence of their joining our research project, so there must be some deception that takes place. This has very clear implications for what we mean when we say that our participants are fully informed and have freely consented.
The third consequence of the epistemological and methodological discussion then poses profound questions for the researcher’s responsibility to the researched’s community, including in the process of finalising ‘data’ but not the analysis and interpretation. It is this aspect that many might find a challenge, not because of what McFee sees as responsibilities to communities but because the consequence is that those we are researching must be kept at a slight distance – so he insists that the researched are subjects, not participants: it is a compelling argument. It is not an always-and-in-every-case argument – much of the book turns around this principle of exceptionlessness.
To my mind, the consequences of this discussion of ethics are profound in terms of how we conceive of research in and around sport, where that research deals with talk (that is people as complete people). Equally, the rejection of scientism profoundly influences how we conceive of research in and around sport as dealing with whole people (which must sound a bit odd – but the contrast is with those scientists who research individual point parts of bodies).
In short, this is a profound challenge to the dominant models of sport science, and one that deserves a wide readership. It has been critically well received by many in my field, but I suspect that it needs a much wider readership by active researcher. This is definitely something for my grad students, and for all of us – but brace yourself for some rigorous philosophyising.
Displaying 1 of 1 review