Are PhD supervisors responsible for informing students about legal issues pertaining to research?
Good research practice (which I would argue is not country specific), requires an independent ethical review of any research that involves human subjects. A university can make blanket determinations that certain types of research do not require individual review (e.g., interviews).
It is generally considered academic/research misconduct to not have proper ethical review and follow the recommended guidelines. Failure to obtain informed consent, when necessary, definitely falls under research misconduct. In the US and UK, it is the responsibility of the supervisor to make sure that the proper procedures are being followed.
In your case, your supervisor should have told you to get informed consent. The problem, however, sounds way bigger then you just not being able to use the data. The problem could be as large as PhD students not being properly trained regarding human subject research and faculty not following good research practice.
You need to work this out with your supervisor quickly. It should eventually escalate to your department chair and the IRB/ethics board. Not getting informed consent, when needed, is a huge deal.
Are PhD supervisors responsible for informing students about legal issues pertaining to research?
Yes, they definitely are. They're not called "supervisors" for nothing, after all. But - that does not mean the PhD candidates have no responsibility of their own; and the extent of that depends on the specifics of each situation.
Also - the fact they are responsible does not mean they won't try to shirk their responsibility, so it also depends on the advisor's quality of character.
Now for your specific case.
Did you get explicit oral consent from your human test subjects, and they were all aware of what you are doing and that the results go into research publications?
"No": In this case, you are also responsible since you should have known better than not to ask their permission at least in some form. Actually, some would argue that you should have applied due diligence and had them agree in writing to participating in the experiment regardless of anything.
"Yes": In this case, your own responsibility is limited; however, that does not mean you'll get to actually publish even if you are not to blame.
At any rate, you need to convince the university to give you access to their lawyers, especially in light of your advisor's negligence and the fact that you were directly instructed by him to go collect the data. You should bring up the following points when talking to the lawyer(s):
- Perhaps the kind of experiments you carried out can be excepted from the consent form requirement?
- Can the data be anonymized so as to avoid the requirement?
- Can statistics/aggregates be published without constituting breaking the legal requirement?
- Does making the data accessible to individuals under certain conditions break the legal requirement? If not, you could publish your work without the actual data, and make that data available to whoever accepts the appropriate conditons.
Finally, if push comes to shove, you could think of possibilities like:
- The university awarding your a PhD without proper publication of your thesis, with just a few examiners reading it (might not be possible).
- Repeating the experimental work - hopefully with university funding to do so.
- Piggy-backing a repeat of your experimental work onto that of another researcher performing continued work in the same vein. If they need your experiment + more things than you get the previous option for free (although with a time delay).
There are two pertinent issues to address here. First, not all forms of research require consent since some data collection doesn't subject participants to any stress or other form of risk and some forms of data will not disclose identifying details of your subjects' behaviors, biomarkers, or other characteristics. In all cases, how far you are required to go in obtaining informed consent depends primarily upon how much 'risk' your participants were exposed to by agreeing to participate in your experiment. This includes 'risk' undertaken by participation and 'risk' they may be exposed to when the data becomes public in some form. If you are doing research within the US, for instance, you should have gone through an IRB process beforehand. When an IRB determines that there is some risk (even minimal) they will require a researcher to stipulate how that risk will be mitigated and may require the researcher to brief subjects about before or after the fact.
However, some forms of data and data collection pose no risk to your participants and can be exempted. If your data set includes no identifying information (including names, biomarkers, photographs, video, etc) then you may not actually have needed an ethics board (or IRB) clearance and there may be no issue with your advisor whatsoever. Online surveys, for instance, or observations of public behavior, do not require consent of any kind, and several other types of research which pose exceptionally low risk can proceed without much sign off. It is possible that obtaining verbal consent from your participants would satisfy your university, but I cannot say for sure. You will need to inquire at your university to figure out whom to consult about this. It will be different at each institution. Since you've indicated that you carried out an experiment on roughly 50 people, I'm guessing it's behavioral research you're conducting. The good news is that in many experimental studies, subjects are expected to be fully informed and give consent only after the experiment has been conducted. There is much precedent for this in psychology.
Second, your relationship with your advisor, while there are gray areas depending upon discipline and university, is not a boss-employee relationship when it comes to your own independent research. If you are getting credit for what you are doing, then you are the one who bears responsibility to make sure that what you're doing is ethical and well considered. I'd suggest that this isn't your advisor's responsibility unless it was clear that your were working on her/his behalf. However, if you and your advisor are having difficulty communicating about expectations and you're receiving little guidance on how to design and carry out research, I would suggest taking on an additional mentor, either in the form of a secondary advisor or graduate counselors at your university.