Research 701 ~ Ethics

This class was on ethics in research. We started by discussing the difference between morals and ethics. The difference that we concluded was that morals are derived from an individual, whereas ethics are derived from society.

The tutor showed us an experiement called the milgram experiment, which I had never heard of before. It was a study around how individuals will do things that go against their morals or ethics if told to do the said thing by an authorative figure (a researcher in this case). The experiment was simple but quite convincing. Participants were told that there has been new studies which indicate that pain is a good incentive for learning new things. Participants were sat in front of a shock machine and would induce a shock if the learner (who was an actor and not really given any pain) answered wrong. The results of the experiment showed that more than 60% of participants would continue to inflict pain on another if told to do so.

This is a very scary example if we take that example and think about what goes on today. Let’s take mass surveillance as an example. It is ethically wrong to tap into people’s devices and record the audio/video. Even if it goes against the employee’s morals they will most likely still carry out the surveillance if ordered to by their authoritative figure (the boss in this case). Now let’s take interrogation as an example. It is ethically wrong to harm someone during interrogation, even if it’s someone who may pose a threat, yet most likely harm will still be done (regardless of morals) if the person is told to do so by the authoritative figure (in this case it may be the president or prime minister). Scary.

The next thing we did in class was we were then given a set of questions relating to ethics that we were to answer, which are as follows (including the answers I made to them).

Is the behaviour described in the examples below is related to ethics

Moral ~ Ethics

If it is, why and how?

Can you come up with a solution that would solve the ethical problem?

You find some good images on the web that would look good on your site. You copy and paste them to your blog.

This one relates to both ethics and the law in certain cases. In regards to the law, if the images were under copyright laws. In regards to ethics if the source is not sited then you are commiting plagerism.

The solution to this example is to make sure that the images are sourced correctly and credit is given where credit is due.

You are in a hurry to finish an assignment and you find the perfect explanation of a difficult concept on wikipedia. You decide to copy it into your work.

This one relates to ethics for the same reason as above, if the source is not sited then you are commiting plagerism.

The solution this to is the same as above, source the information and give credit where credit is due.

You are a medical researcher and you think you have discovered a new drug that cures lung cancer. It worked well on mice although a few of them died of heart problems. You want to test it on people. You recruit 100 lung cancer patients into your treatment programme. You don’t tell them about the new drug. You treat 50 patients with usual drugs and 50 with the new drug to see which is better.

This has moral and ethical implications. It is morally wrong to give patients drugs without informing them of what they are taking. It is ethically wrong to test a new drug on patients when it is known to cause death, especially without fully informing the patient(s).

The solution to this is simply inform the patient(s) and to not test something until it is safe to do so.

You are doing your PhD about drug abuse among students. You interview 30 students about their drug use. You discover that one of the students is actually a fairly big time dealer and you report him to the police.

This relates to ethics primarily and subjective morals. In regards to ethics, drugs are wrong and against the law. In terms of morals, I say it’s subjective because it all comes down to the individual person and whether or not they are morally ok with said drug.

The solution would be to notify all participants that any information gained during the experiment unless the said information relates to breaking the law like the above scenario.

You are a researcher looking at the effect of violent computer games on children. You recruit 20 children into your study. Over a month you regularly show them images of violence to see if it has an adverse effect on their behaviour. One of the children becomes quite distressed each time and so you stop showing her images and drop her from the study.

This is an ethical issue and also a moral issue. The ethics and morals involved are exposing children to violent images as this can mentally damage the children. Like always for morals though, it’s depends very much on the individual.

The solution to this would be to get the permission of parents before having the children participate.

You want to research how easy it is to hack into your organisation’s computer system by persuading people to divulge login and password details. You recruit a small team to ring up key people in the organisation and persuade them to give either their own or their boss’s details.

The ethics involved in this are related to a couple of things. First even if you were to hack a company for good intentions, unless the company is fully aware it can be viewed badly. Second getting people to divulge private information, especially information relating to sensitive information like login details is ethically wrong.

The solution to this would be to coordinate with the company and give full insight of the hack.

You are doing an initial research in area of a town where may bars and pubs are located, to estimate the level of problematic social behaviour in the area. your research is independent from the police, because you want to observe their behaviour as well. You observe both abusive and violent behaviour.

There are ethical and moral implications regardless of the person involved in this scenario. It is both ethically and morally wrong to observe abusive and violent behaviour without intervention. This also puts the researcher at risk as they are doing the research independent from the police and putting themselves in a potentially dangerous environment.

A solution to this would be to only record instances that did not escalate past a certain point (although that point would be subjective to the researcher’s bias), and to report any escalated instances to the police.