Ethical implications

• Define ethical implications

  The negative effects of the research onto those in society
• Define socially sensitive research

  • Research that could have an impact in society, either for the specific individuals involved or a social group
  • particularly sensitive research includes investigating different social groups based on factors such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity or religion etc
• What are the solutions to avoid ethical implications

  • Avoid all socially sensitive research
  • make researchers register their research before carrying it out
  • introduce strict rules about how the media interprets and represents research
• Who proposed there are four aspects that can lead to ethical implications

  Sieber and Stanley
• What four aspects did Sieber and Stanley propose could lead to ethical implications

  • The research question
  • conduct of research and treatment of participants
  • the institutional context
  • interpretation and application of findings
• How can the research question lead to ethical implications

  By investigating a question you can lend scientific credibility to the idea so must be careful about what you investigate
• How can the conduct of research and treatment of participants lead to ethical implications

  • The most important ethical consideration here is confidentiality of information
  • particularly when dealing with socially sensitive issues you must be sure not to cause potential harm to your participants
• How can the institutional context lead to ethical implications

  • Research needs to be funded and managed by an institution or private company
  • they can manipulate the outcome, for example by ignoring any negative findings and only publishing positive ones
• How can interpretations and application of findings lead to ethical implications

  • The ways in which others report or apply findings may be unethical
  • if you discovered an ethnicity difference in intelligence others may see this as a justification for holding some ethnicities as second class citizens
• What is a weakness of avoiding all socially sensitive research

  • All research could be argued to be socially sensitive so who would decide which research could be carried out
• What are strengths of making researchers register their research score carrying it out

  • Would help to avoid publication bias which is the failure to publish results of a study on the basis of the direction of the study
  • could offer another stage of regulation for someone to prevent research
• What are weaknesses of making researchers register their research score carrying it out

  • It is difficult to decide what research is harmful
  • may discourage potentially valuable research from being done
• What is a weakness of introducing strict rules about how the media interprets and represents research

  Could discourage scientific reporting