Week 14: “Ethics in Social Research”

In order to conduct research on social problems we often must expose our subjects to the harmful effects, we are attempting to eliminate. We discussed a number of ways to ethically conduct such potentially harmful research, including animal research, computer simulation, the study of existing conditions, exposure of subjects for only a short duration, informing subjects of danger, rationalizing the harm to subjects is justified by the greater scientific good, use of samples rather than complete populations so that fewer subjects are harmed, and maintenance of privacy through the publication of aggregate data. We next turned to a discussion of the ethical problems involved in using deception in experiments (deception is often resorted to so that subjects will not guess the purpose of the experiment and bias the data). Following that we discussed ethical problems that may arise in sponsored research, such as a sponsor requesting that the researcher suppress findings. We concluded the chapter with a discussion of professional codes of ethics, ethics in observational research, and neglected aspects of research ethics to subjects is justified by the greater scientific good, use of samples rather than complete populations so that fewer subjects are harmed, and maintenance of privacy through the publication of aggregate data. We next turned to a discussion of the ethical problems involved in using deception in experiments (deception is often resorted to so that subjects will not guess the purpose of the experiment and bias the data). Following that we discussed ethical problems that may arise in sponsored research, such as a sponsor requesting that the researcher suppress findings. We concluded the chapter with a discussion of professional codes of ethics, ethics in observational research, and neglected aspects of research ethics.”