Ethics in research
Ethics in Research
"Research ethics concerns the responsability of researchers to be honest and respectful to all individuals who are affected by their research studies or their report of the studies' results." (Gravetter & Forzano, 2012, p. 108).
Human Research Participants
Medical and psychological research wasn't always 'ethica'l by today's standards. Studies that would horrify us today were common in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Prior to the end of World War II, researchers generally made their own ethical standards. After the second world war, when gruesome experiments conducted by Nazi scientists so outraged the scientific community that the Nuremberg trials of war criminals also led to the "Nuremburg Code" for ethical research. (p. 109 - 110).
(image of Nazi medical experiment)
It wasn't only the Nazi's conducting research that would be regarded as unethical by today's standards. The brief (approx 3 minute) video below provides information about one of the most infamous unethical studies conducted in the United States and that began in the late 1930's.. Be sure to watch the video, as it will be discussed further below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-YMdaEdbcg
Links to an external site.
Today psychologists follow the American Psychological Association's "Ethical Guidelines fo the use and treatment of human participants in research." You can find the entire ethics code here: APA ethics code.pdf Download APA ethics code.pdf
Some of the major issues pertaining to research with human participants are: (pp. 113-127)
No harm
(image of person applying eeg cap to researh particpant)
Researchers must protect the physical and psychological health of participants.
In extrodinary circumstances 'harmful' experiments can be performed; for instance, people with a fatal disease might be offered an experiemntal treatment that has harmful side effects if it offers the possibility of improving their survival time or quality of life.
- How did the Tuskegee study do with respect to the principle of 'no harm'?
Informed consent
Patricipants must be told about all of the risks and benefits of their participation in a research study.
The researcher must make sure that they understand what they are consenting to.
They must be legally able to consent - not mentally disabled, not a minor, not a person with a guardian.
If there is deception (p. 121) there must be a later debriefing.
Consent must be written - with some exceptions (see p. 115 #7)
- How did the Tuskegee study do with respect to theprinciple of 'informed consent'?
Voluntary
Potential participants must not be coerced into participating and, even further, must be able to freely agree to participate or decline to participate (p. . SPecial protection is given to people with limited ability to 'voluntarily' partiicpate. For instance, prisoners, inpatients, children, mentall or physically incapacitated people. Also, we do not pay people large sums of money for people to participate in potenetially harmful experiments
- How did the Tuskegee study do with respect to the principle of voluntary participation?
Privacy and confidentiality (p. 123)
Research particpants names and identifying information are kept confidential. Nmes are usually assigned numeric or other codes. Identifying information is kept in secure storage, and destroyed after some period of time.
- Why do you think we keep names at all -- why not ensure confidentiality by not even bothering to record names?
Institutional approval
Institutional review boards (IRB) review and approve - or deny - research studies before they may begin (pp. 125 - 127). They make sure that the above ethical principles are followed and also to make sure that the researchers are competent to conduct the research; that the research question is important; that the data will be collected and stored in an appropriate manner, and etc. They also conduct annual reviews to make sure there has been no change in the ethical status of the project. For example, if a treatment were thought to be harmless and an annual review foudn that participants had physical or psychological problems after participating in the study, they might ask the researchers to modify or suspend the study.
- Would a modern IRB approve the Tuskegee syphilis study? Is there any way you could modify the study to make it acceptable?
Non-human Subjects
(image of a mouse in a maze)
Did you notice that humans are referred to as 'participants' and animals as 'subjects'? Think about it -- humans 'participate' in research because they are involved voluntarily, know what is going on, and can withdraw their consent at any time.
Animals are not so fortunate, and thus are regarded as 'subjects' rather than participants. And they still are protected. (p. 127 - 130)
Researchers must:
- care for animals properly
- demonstrate that they are properly trained to manage then
- minimize all forms of discomfort, pain, disease,
- Where there is discomfort or death to the animal, scientists must show that there isn't a less harmful way to gather the same information
- If the animal will be euthanized the method must be quick and minimize siffering
Scientific Integrity
While protection of human participants and animal subjects in research are paramount, there are additional ethical issues to consider and that ensure that research is conducted with honesty and integrity (pp. 130 - 133).
Plagiarism
By this point in your academic career you should know what plagiarism is, and if you need a review please open the following link:avoiding_plagiarism.pdf Download avoiding_plagiarism.pdf
It can be difficult to distinguish errors (unintended mistakes) from fraud (intentional attempts to decieve)
Chapter 4 considers why fraud (sometimes) occurs and how it can be minimized.
Ethics Discussion/Assignment
And now, consider the following for the discussion...
Ethical prinicples are not black and white. Two ways to understand ethical principles in research are to consider studies that appear to violate important ethical principles, but might be approved, and to consider studies that appear ethical, but violate ethical priniciples in some way.
You will consider such studies in your discussion groups. A few things to consider as you begin your discussions...
In general, when a study appears to violate an ethical principle but is judged to be acceptable, it is often because the topic is considered important - this is key - it must be important or even very, very important, and:
if all usual ethical principles were followed the data could not be collected AND the data would beneficial to some population.
harm could come to the particpants if they were not part of the study
harm could come ot eh participants if the usual procedures were followed
cultural differences are being respected
the benefits outweigh the risks AND there has been informed consent
Where studies appear to be ethical yet ar found to be in violation of ethical standards, look for the possibility that:
informed consent was lacking in some way
the risks of participating outweigh the benefits