On ethics regimes and the problem of maintaining the face of qualitative research: a commentary on Iara C. Z. Guerriero's and Sueli Dallari's paper.

Guerriero and Dallari’s paper, “The Need for Adequate Ethical Guidelines for Qualitative Health Research,” illustrates vital differences between the principles and paradigms of medical research and those of the social sciences, and qualitative research in particular. They are quite right when they claim, that “it is not adequate to analyze qualitative researches in health by seeking the support” of such documents that are the fundamental bases of medical and positivist research. This paper explores the ongoing problems imposed by the medical-research ethics model on qualitative research. This paper also asserts that the many varieties of qualitative research, the rise of interdisciplinarity, the ignorance of the historical roots of qualitative research, and the (re)emergence of neo-positivism make it difficult for qualitative research to resist the impact of national ethics regimes.