Speculating on Precarious Income: Finance Cultures and the Risky Strategies of Healthy Volunteers in Clinical Drug Trials

Replication and Reproduction: Crises in Psychology and Academic Labour

Discussions of the replication crisis in psychology require more substantive analysis of the crisis of academic labour and of social reproduction in the university. Both the replication crisis and the crisis of social reproduction in the university describe a failure in processes of reproducing something. The financial crisis of 2007–8 shortly preceded the emergence of the replication crisis, as well as exacerbated ongoing tendencies in the organisation and practices of university research (particularly the use of precarious contracts and the adjunctification of research). These provide two reasons to address these two named crises together. But many analyses of and responses to the replication crisis turn to research culture, often at the expense of adequate investigations of research labour. Today’s psychological sciences are made through multiple forms of labour: these include researchers, who range from senior principal investigators to sub-contracted, and exploited, research assistants; research participants/subjects, who include those providing labour for experiments via exploitative platforms including Amazon Mechanical Turk; and workers providing heterogeneous technical and administrative labour. Through understanding what is at stake for these multiple forms of labour, psychology might better analyse problems besetting psychology today, as well as develop different imaginaries and practices for how to address them.

Healthy volunteers in US phase I clinical trials: Sociodemographic characteristics and participation over time

BACKGROUND

Increasing the diversity of research participants is an important focus of clinical trials. However, little is known regarding who enrolls as healthy volunteers in Phase I clinical trials, which test the safety and tolerability of investigational new drugs. Despite the risk, healthy volunteers can derive no medical benefit from their participation, and they are financially compensated for enrolling.

OBJECTIVE

This study's purpose is to describe sociodemographic characteristics and clinical trial participation histories of healthy people who enroll in US Phase I trials.

METHODS

The HealthyVOICES Project (HVP) is a longitudinal study of healthy individuals who have enrolled in Phase I trials. We describe self-reported sociodemographic information and Phase I trial history from HVP recruitment (May-December 2013) through the project's end three years later (December 2016). Trial experiences are presented as medians and quartiles.

RESULTS

The HVP included 178 participants. Nearly three-fourths of participants were male, and two-thirds were classified as racial and ethnic minorities. We found that some groups of participants were more likely to have completed a greater number of clinical trials over a longer timeframe than others. Those groups included participants who were male, Black, Hispanic, 30-39-years-old, unemployed, had received vocational training in a trade, or had annual household incomes of less than $25,000. Additionally, the greater the number of clinical trials participants had completed, the more likely they were to continue screening for new trials over the course of three years. Participants who pursued clinical trials as a full-time job participated in the greatest number of trials and were the most likely to continuing screening over time.

IMPLICATIONS

Participation as a healthy volunteer in US Phase I trials is driven by social inequalities. Disadvantaged groups tend to participate in a greater number of clinical trials and participate longer than more privileged groups.