H03 - [IN-PERSON/RECORDED] The Speech Act of Informed Consent

This session will be offered in-person and recorded for on-demand access by in-person PRIMR23 attendees registered for this day, and PRIMR23/SBER23 Virtual Meeting registrants.

Research ethics discussions often refer to informed consent as a decision, a process, a form, or a signature, and regulations that outline particular requirements for what informed consent must entail. All of these notions are lacking in some way. This session will approach the idea of informed consent as a kind of "speech act," that is, as something prospective subjects do with words. Speech acts are not simply true or false, but rather serve a function and are also evaluated according to standards which imply ethical commitments on the part of both prospective subjects and investigators. Understanding informed consent as a speech act helps to illuminate how subjects and investigators ought to behave.