Health and illness research: value-free or value-laden?

Abstract

This chapter asks whether health research can and should be value-free. It questions whether facts can be separated from values, and then considers: health-related rights; dignity in healthcare; truth, trust and consent; values and ethics in health research. The chapter also looks at: what critical realism can add on important ethical concerns that are missing or under-examined in other paradigms; health research paradigms and ethics; ethical naturalism and moral realism; learning from other major theorists: advocacy on many levels and, finally, the chapter compares the approaches to values in realist evaluation and in critical realism. In the detailed example, Graham Scambler combines critical realism with Habermas’s theories.