Ethics are the moral principles that a person must follow, irrespective of the place or time. Behaving ethically involves doing the right thing at the right time. Research ethics focus on the moral principles that researchers must follow in their respective fields of research.
Why Do Ethics Matter?
There are several reasons why it is important to adhere to ethical norms in research. First, norms promote the aims of research, such as knowledge, truth, and avoidance of error. For example, prohibitions against fabricating, falsifying, or misrepresenting research data promote the truth and minimize error.
Second, since research often involves a great deal of cooperation and coordination among many different people in different disciplines and institutions, ethical standards promote the values that are essential to collaborative work, such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness. For example, many ethical norms in research, such as guidelines for authorship, copyright and patenting policies, data sharing policies, and confidentiality rules in peer review, are designed to protect intellectual property interests while encouraging collaboration. Most researchers want to receive credit for their contributions and do not want to have their ideas stolen or disclosed prematurely.
Third, many of the ethical norms help to ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public. For instance, federal policies on research misconduct, conflicts of interest, the human subjects protections, and animal care and use are necessary in order to make sure that researchers who are funded by public money can be held accountable to the public.
Fourth, ethical norms in research also help to build public support for research. People are more likely to fund a research project if they can trust the quality and integrity of research.
Finally, many of the norms of research promote a variety of other important moral and social values, such as social responsibility, human rights, animal welfare, compliance with the law, and public health and safety. Ethical lapses in research can significantly harm human and animal subjects, students, and the public. For example, a researcher who fabricates data in a clinical trial may harm or even kill patients, and a researcher who fails to abide by regulations and guidelines relating to radiation or biological safety may jeopardize his health and safety or the health and safety of staff and students.
Research Participants Must Be Aware
Informed consent is a key principle of research ethics. It is important that the person who is invited to be part of the research understands both the benefits and the risks involved. They must have all the information that could affect their decision to participate. Each potential research participant should know:
- Why the study is being done, how long it will last, and what methods will be used
- Whether they have the right to not participate or to leave the study at any time
- What are the possible risks or benefits involved, if any
- What are the limits of confidentiality (circumstances under which their identity might be revealed)
- Whom they can contact for their queries.
Different Research Ethics for Different Disciplines
There are general codes of ethics for different disciplines. You can use the Declaration of Helsinki for biomedical research. There are even ethics guidelines for internet researchers and psychologists.
Regardless of the discipline, all ethical guidelines seek to maximize good and minimize ill effects. Research ethics, therefore, require that all participants provide voluntary informed consent. All research must seek to answer questions that will benefit humanity. The risks must be minimized as far as humanly possible.
Ethical Principles
Research ethics provides guidelines for the responsible conduct of research. In addition, it educates and monitors scientists conducting research to ensure a high ethical standard. The following is a general summary of some ethical principles:
- Honesty: Honestly report data, results, methods and procedures, and publication status. Do not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data.
- Objectivity: Strive to avoid bias in experimental design, data analysis, data interpretation, peer review, personnel decisions, grant writing, expert testimony, and other aspects of research.
- Integrity: Keep your promises and agreements; act with sincerity; strive for consistency of thought and action.
- Carefulness: Avoid careless errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine your own work and the work of your peers. Keep good records of research activities.
- Openness: Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.
- Respect for Intellectual Property: Honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. Do not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. Give credit where credit is due. Never plagiarize.
- Confidentiality: Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication, personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient records.
- Responsible Publication: Publish in order to advance research and scholarship, not to advance just your own career. Avoid wasteful and duplicative publication.
- Responsible Mentoring: Help to educate, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to make their own decisions.
- Respect for Colleagues: Respect your colleagues and treat them fairly.
- Social Responsibility: Strive to promote social good and prevent or mitigate social harms through research, public education, and advocacy.
- Non-Discrimination: Avoid discrimination against colleagues or students on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or other factors that are not related to their scientific competence and integrity.
- Competence: Maintain and improve your own professional competence and expertise through lifelong education and learning; take steps to promote competence in science as a whole.
- Legality: Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies.
- Animal Care: Show proper respect and care for animals when using them in research. Do not conduct unnecessary or poorly designed animal experiments.
- Human Subjects Protection: When conducting research on human subjects, minimize harms and risks and maximize benefits; respect human dignity, privacy, and autonomy.
Definition of Research Misconduct
Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.
(a) Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.
(b) Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
(c) Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.
(d) Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion.
There are many other activities that the government does not define as "misconduct" but which are still regarded by most researchers as unethical. These are sometimes referred to as "other deviations" from acceptable research practices and include:
- Publishing the same paper in two different journals without telling the editors
- Submitting the same paper to different journals without telling the editors
- Not informing a collaborator of your intent to file a patent in order to make sure that you are the sole inventor
- Including a colleague as an author on a paper in return for a favor even though the colleague did not make a serious contribution to the paper
- Discussing with your colleagues confidential data from a paper that you are reviewing for a journal
- Using data, ideas, or methods you learn about while reviewing a grant or a papers without permission
- Trimming outliers from a data set without discussing your reasons in paper
- Using an inappropriate statistical technique in order to enhance the significance of your research
- Bypassing the peer review process and announcing your results through a press conference without giving peers adequate information to review your work
- Conducting a review of the literature that fails to acknowledge the contributions of other people in the field or relevant prior work
- Stretching the truth on a grant application in order to convince reviewers that your project will make a significant contribution to the field
- Stretching the truth on a job application or curriculum vita
- Giving the same research project to two graduate students in order to see who can do it the fastest
- Overworking, neglecting, or exploiting graduate or post-doctoral students
- Failing to keep good research records
- Failing to maintain research data for a reasonable period of time
- Making derogatory comments and personal attacks in your review of author's submission
- Promising a student a better grade for sexual favors
- Using a racist epithet in the laboratory
- Making significant deviations from the research protocol approved by your institution's Animal Care and Use Committee or Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research without telling the committee or the board
- Not reporting an adverse event in a human research experiment
- Wasting animals in research
- Exposing students and staff to biological risks in violation of your institution's biosafety rules
- Sabotaging someone's work
- Stealing supplies, books, or data
- Rigging an experiment so you know how it will turn out
- Making unauthorized copies of data, papers, or computer programs
- Owning over $10,000 in stock in a company that sponsors your research and not disclosing this financial interest
- Deliberately overestimating the clinical significance of a new drug in order to obtain economic benefits
Making Ethical Decisions
Ethical decision making in academic research focuses on providing maximum benefits to the participants. Following ethical principles is indeed crucial for maintaining research integrity.
There are some core principles that guide ethical decision making. Firstly, you must be committed to ethical principles. This means choosing an ethical behavior even if it delays your work or means not getting published quickly in a prestigious journal.
Next, you must determine the authenticity of the facts. It is important to evaluate the credibility of the information before taking any decisions regarding the research. Create a list of actions you could take and evaluate the consequences of each one. Make a final choice that seeks to minimize harm and build trust. Ethical decision making also affects how you report research data and who can be considered an author.
Ethics governs not just the treatment provided to the research participants but also to the researchers. Any researcher who contributes substantially to a research project or paper needs to get credit. This holds true even if the researcher is a student. This is usually done by naming him/her as an author on the final paper. It is best to have this discussion before writing the research paper. That way, everyone involved can have their say. A person should not be included as an author because of his/her position in the institute. For example, the head of a department should only be included as one of the authors of the paper, if he/she did substantial work for the paper.
Researchers need to ensure that they do not wield undue influence over others. A professor may want to recruit his or her students for a study. In this case, he or she must make it clear that participation is voluntary, not compulsory. Moreover, no student must feel pressured to participate.
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