Paper short abstract:

Focusing on clinical trials in Sri Lanka, we show how researchers harness research for objectives beyond scientific pursuit. However, ideas of ‘development’ can be incompatible and contradicting.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation explores the tangled relationship between biomedical research and development, with particular view on Sri Lanka. It is based on several years of joint work and ethnographic research of our on-going book project entitled 'Research as Development: international collaborations, clinical trials and bioethics in Sri Lanka'. The book concentrates on the cross-overs between research as systematic knowledge creation and innovation, and development as the orchestration of economic, material and human resources to achieve economic growth, improvements in well-being, sustainability and a range of other objectives. The loci of our interest are the international collaborations, and particularly clinical trials, which bring together researchers across differentials of power and resources.

We show how researchers and institutions work to advance their intellectual pursuits and national research cultures through international collaboration. Focusing on three controversies around ethics and clinical trials in Sri Lanka as a way to look at tensions around these activities illustrates the conceptual challenges of clinical trials and their regulation. Our analysis shows that ideas about what stands for 'development' can be incompatible and contradicting, and people disagree about the shape and kind of research cultures as well as the values embedded in the different notions of bioethics, leading to individual and institutional conflicts and compartmentalised regulatory structures.