Overview

Warning! Since this is the first 'real' discussion, the instructions are rather long...

Ethical principles are not black and white. Two ways to understand ethical principles in research are to consider cases that appear to violate important ethical principles but are regarded as ethical, and to consider cases that might appear to be ethical but actually violate ethical principles. Your task is to discuss some examples and consider why APPARENT violations of ethical principles have been allowed, or in other cases why seemingly ethical projects have been disallowed.

The ‘all class’ discussion was fine for the first assignment, introducing yourself and sharing interests. For all remaining discussions you will work in groups of a more manageable size – large enough for multiple points of view, and small enough to have a dialogue – kind of like a lab group would if the class were live.

You have been randomly assigned to a group, and you will work with the same group members for the remainder of the discussions during the semester.

How to complete the assignment

In order to complete this assignment you must discuss the two items below.  You must make meaningful contributions to the discussion of both items - 'non-meaningful' contributions include comments such as "ditto", "me too", "what he said.", ”I’m not sure I understand the assignment”, "no clue", "LOL", "nope", etc.. Of course you are welcome to make these types comments, sometimes “LOL” or “I’m not sure I understand” are totally appropriate comments – you just won’t get graded on such comments.

A 'meaningful' comment moves the discussion forward, it offers something another can respond to. You may offer an opinion, feel free to agree or disagree with others so long as you do it in a way that is respectful. Many of the items have more than one ‘right’ answer – they are ‘gray areas’ which makes them topics worthy of discussion..

A discussion is a dialogue, a conversation, so you should participate more than once in response to each of the two examples. There is not an exact number of comments to make for full credit –though three comments, with at least one response to each scenarion, is a minimum. Three detailed thoughtful comments will be good enough. Three ‘minimalist’ comments may not be – like writing a paper with a 4 – 6 page length, quality more than quantity matters… The aim is to have a conversation and show that you have learned something about and are thinking about ethics. If all your comments are in the final minutes before the assignment is due, then you are not moving any discussion forward, and this will affect your grade; someone has to make the last comment, and you should be checking in on the discussion now and again throughout the week, not all at once. Once the discussion gets going, respond to one anothers comments as well as to the scenario posed. Friendly debate is fine, so long as you keep it respectful.

 You will each get an individual grade. This first group discussionwill not include a peer review, and future discussions will.

If you are ‘stuck’ or having problems in the group feel free to ask the instructor or TA for assistance.

Someone has to get the discussion started – why not you? If some in your group are mot participating, you need not wiat for them; have the conversation with whomever is participating whether all of you or only some of youa re involved in the conversation at any given time.

What might you discuss beyond a simple anwer to the question posed in the scenario? How it ties into ethical principles, whether you think the project is ethical, how you would make it more ethical, how it reminds you of other examples of ethcial or unethicl research, or of gray areas that are hard to classify...and there are other directions your conversation might go, just keep the focus on ethics in research.

Be polite. Be bold. Participate. Feel free to share as much or as little baout yourself as youa re comfortable with in getting to know your group.

Finally...

Your group should discuss two of the scenarios below.

Group 1: scenarios 1 & 5                Group 2: scenarios 1 & 6              Group 3: scenarios 1 & 7         Group 4: scenarios 1 & 8

Group 5: scenarios 2 & 5                 Group 6: scenarios 2 & 6              Group 7: scenarios 2 & 7          Group 8:scenarios 2 & 8

Group 9: scenarios 3 & 5                 Group 10: scenarios 3 & 6             Group11: scenarios 4 & 5        

Group 12 scenarios 4 & 6                 Group 13: scenarios 4 & 7

Scenarios

1) Tony studies teen smoking. Even though ethical principles say that he should get parental consent whenever minors under the age of 18 are participating in research he was allowed to recruit 14 and 15 year olds who smoke via the internet, and they were permitted to participate WITHOUT parental consent. Why was this permitted?

2) Ahmed and Karen do cross cultural research on mother-child relationships. In one study they asked North African tribal elders for permission for mothers to participate in research even though the mothers were all over the age of 18 and provided their own consent. Why would they do this when the participants are adults?

3) Sarah and Jesus study criminal behavior and wanted to survey people who used to be involved in criminal activity, and have reformed without going to prison. They asked people to participate in an online survey asking them about their criminal behavior for the past 10 years and what they did to change their behavior. They did not ask people for their names and addresses and were not required to have them sign a consent form. Why could they do this even though it appears to be a violation of informed consent?

4) Tamika and Chris are studying the behavior of teens who are frequently in trouble at school. Since they know that these kids are unlike to be willing to participate on their own, they made sure they got parental consent. Without the parents making them participate, they wouldn’t be able to recruit participants. How can they improve this study?

5) Jonathan was studying the effectiveness of a new treatment for cancer and mid-way through his study after half of the participants seemed to be improving while the other half were dying at a faster rate, they ended the double-blind condition and gave all of the participants the experimental drug even though it hadn't been tested on a large number of people. Why would they do this and break the protocol that the participants consented to?

6) Ying is studying the effectiveness of a new cancer drug. Several people with stage 4 pancreatic cancer were allowed to participate in the study even though the drug has very harmful side effects. Why did this not violate the ‘do no harm’ ethical standard?

7) Brittany is studying a new drug for anxiety. Since it has some unpleasant – but not life threatening – side effects she is paying participants $2,000 to participate in the study. Why is this a problem?

8) Brendon is studying the effect of new program offered in prisons that aims to help prisoners get vocational training while they are in prison. He asked prison guards to recruit prisoners and bring him a list of the names of those willing to participate. The recruiting form informs them that all they have to do is fill out a 25 question survey. What else does he need to tell the prisoners in order to make the study ethical.