16.1: Ethical Principles in Scientific Research
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Some of the expected tenets of ethical behaviour that are widely accepted within the scientific community are as follows:
Voluntary participation and harmlessness. Subjects in a research project must be aware that their participation in the study is voluntary, that they have the freedom to withdraw from the study at any time without any unfavourable consequences, and they will not be harmed as a result of their participation or non-participation in the project. One of the most flagrant violations of the voluntary participation principle is the forced medical experiments conducted by Nazi researchers on prisoners of war during World War II, as documented in the post-War Nuremberg Trials—these experiments also originated the term ‘crimes against humanity’. Lesser known violations include the Tuskegee syphilis experiments conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932–1972, in which nearly 400 impoverished African‑American men suffering from syphilis were denied penicillin even after it was accepted as an effective treatment for syphilis. Instead, subjects were presented with false treatments such as spinal taps. Even if subjects face no mortal threat, they should not be subjected to personal agony as a result of their participation. In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo created the Stanford Prison Experiment, where Stanford students recruited as subjects were randomly assigned roles such as prisoners or guards. When it became evident that student prisoners were suffering psychological damage as a result of their mock incarceration, and student guards were exhibiting sadism that would later challenge their own self-image, the experiment was terminated.
If an instructor asks their students to fill out a questionnaire and informs them that their participation is voluntary, students should not fear that their non-participation may hurt their grade in class in any way. For instance, it in unethical to provide bonus points for participation and no bonus points for non-participation, because it places non-participants at a distinct disadvantage. To avoid such circumstances, the instructor could provide an alternate task for non-participants so that they can recoup the bonus points without participating in the research study, or by providing bonus points to everyone irrespective of their participation or non-participation. Furthermore, all participants must receive and sign an Informed Consent form that clearly describes their right to refuse participation, as well as their right to withdraw, before their responses in the study can be recorded. In a medical study, this form must also specify any possible risks to subjects from their participation. For subjects under the age of 18, this form must be signed by their parent or legal guardian. Researchers must retain these informed consent forms for a period of time (often three years) after the completion of the data collection process in order comply with the norms of scientific conduct in their discipline or workplace.
Anonymity and confidentiality. To protect subjects’ interests and future wellbeing, their identity must be protected in a scientific study. This is done using the dual principles of anonymity and confidentiality. Anonymity implies that the researcher or readers of the final research report or paper cannot identify a respondent by their response. An example of anonymity in scientific research is a postal survey in which no identification numbers are used to track who is responding to the survey and who is not. In studies of deviant or undesirable behaviours, such as drug use or illegal music downloading by students, truthful responses may not be obtained if subjects are not assured of anonymity. Further, anonymity assures that subjects are insulated from law enforcement or other authorities who may have an interest in identifying and tracking such subjects in the future.
In some research designs such as face-to-face interviews, anonymity is not possible. In other designs, such as a longitudinal field survey, anonymity is not desirable because it prevents the researcher from matching responses from the same subject at different points in time for longitudinal analysis. Under such circumstances, subjects should be guaranteed confidentiality , in which the researcher can identify a person’s responses, but promises not to divulge that person’s identify in any report, paper, or public forum. Confidentiality is a weaker form of protection than anonymity, because in most countries, researchers and their subjects do not enjoy the same professional confidential relationship privilege as is granted to lawyers and their clients. For instance, two years after the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled ten million barrels of crude oil near the port of Valdez in Alaska, communities suffering economic and environmental damage commissioned a San Diego research firm to survey the affected households about increased psychological problems in their family. Because the cultural norms of many Native Americans made such public revelations particularly painful and difficult, respondents were assured their responses would be treated with confidentiality. However, when this evidence was presented in court, Exxon petitioned the court to subpoena the original survey questionnaires—with identifying information—in order to cross-examine respondents regarding answers they had given to interviewers under the protection of confidentiality, and their request was granted. Fortunately, the Exxon Valdez case was settled before the victims were forced to testify in open court, but the potential for similar violations of confidentiality still remains.
In another extreme case, Rik Scarce—a graduate student at Washington State University—was called before a grand jury to identify the animal rights activists he observed for his 1990 book, Eco ‑w arriors: Understanding the radical environmental movement . In keeping with his ethical obligations as a member of the American Sociological Association, Scarce refused to answer grand jury questions, and was forced to spend 159 days at Spokane County Jail. To protect themselves from similar travails, researchers should remove any identifying information from documents and data files as soon as they are no longer necessary.
Disclosure. Usually, researchers are obliged to provide information about their study to potential subjects before data collection to help them decide whether or not they wish to participate. For instance, who is conducting the study, for what purpose, what outcomes are expected, and who will benefit from the results. However, in some cases, disclosing such information may potentially bias subjects’ responses. For instance, if the purpose of a study is to examine the extent to which subjects will abandon their own views to conform with ‘groupthink’, and they participate in an experiment where they listen to others’ opinions on a topic before voicing their own, then disclosing the study’s purpose before the experiment will likely sensitise subjects to the treatment. Under such circumstances, even if the study’s purpose cannot be revealed before the study, it should be revealed in a debriefing session immediately following the data collection process, with a list of potential risks or harm to participants during the experiment.
Analysis and reporting. Researchers also have ethical obligations to the scientific community on how data is analysed and reported in their study. Unexpected or negative findings should be disclosed in full, even if they cast some doubt on the research design or the findings. Similarly, many interesting relationships are discovered after a study is completed, by chance or data mining. It is unethical to present such findings as the product of deliberate design. In other words, hypotheses should not be designed in positivist research after the fact based on the results of data analysis, because the role of data in such research is to test hypotheses, and not build them. It is also unethical to ‘carve’ their data into different segments to prove or disprove their hypotheses of interest, or to generate multiple papers claiming different datasets. Misrepresenting questionable claims as valid based on partial, incomplete, or improper data analysis is also dishonest. Science progresses through openness and honesty, and researchers can best serve science and the scientific community by fully disclosing the problems with their research, so that they can save other researchers from similar problems.