Abstract
Many commentators on research ethics have been based in the Global North and, when we find research ethics regulations that look very much like our own, we tend to make assumptions about the ways in which these patterns of regulation have unfolded. Apart from being disrespectful to local histories, insensitive to difference and intellectually lazy, failure to engage with the rich history of regulatory practices in different jurisdictions makes it hard for research ethicists to learn from others. That is hardly a position with which most people working in the field of research ethics would want to be associated...