This week, we are investigating ethics regarding research.
Below are the two definitions retrieved from Google for the word ethics.
1. “moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.”
2. “the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.“
Ethics is both a field of study as well as a principle, however, these definitions do not tell us what is ethical. What is ethical can be contrastingly different for different people, however, people from similar places, cultures and times will likely have similar thoughts on ethical behaviour, when people disagree on what is ethical things can get quite out of hand.
Ethics applies to everything we do, most of the time you are unaware of whether what you are doing is ethical because the task requires no thought on the matter. However, when considered in a research or academic environment, ethics has a big impact on how things are done. Below are some scenarios Lars has provided for us to show how ethical behaviour applies to research.
- 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.
- You are doing an initial research in area of a town where many 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.
Due to the nature of many of our research proposals, ethics doesn’t play a big part since many of us are working solely with computers, however, as soon as other people or animals become involved ethical behaviour should be exercised. This is easier said then done since there is no set guidelines on what is ethical apart from the law, which even sometimes isn’t a good guide on ethical behaviour.
Basic ethical behaviour as society defines it is not hard to master. Consider other peoples health and wellbeing. Treat others respectfully, equally and how you would like to be treated and respect personal privacy. The line of what is ethical becomes blurred and a hotbed for debates when thinking about more complex issues such as the ones below. For any research paper you should include a clear code of ethics that is publicly available.
Some more complex topics regarding ethics.
- Should euthanasia be legal?
- Is the death penalty just?
- Is genome editing in pre-borns ethical?
- Should humans control the human population?
- Is it right to geo-engineer the planet?
PRJ701 Blog - Gijs 