100 Questions (and Answers) About Research Ethics. Emily E. Anderson
guidelines for obtaining informed consent are not followed appropriately;
people are included in research without their prior consent or knowledge, when consent is required;
researchers lie to participants (except in IRB-approved research that involves legitimate deception and appropriate debriefing processes);
individuals are coerced into participating in research against their will;
researchers target individuals who may find it difficult to refuse participation due to personal circumstances;
participants are exposed to unreasonable or unnecessary risks;
researchers do not follow their IRB-approved protocol; or
researchers make up or manipulate research data in order to suggest promising results.
Research may still be considered unethical even if the researcher’s actions do not result in clear evidence of harm or there did not appear to be any intentional wrongdoing. It is also important to realize that participants may be unintentionally harmed, even if policies and procedures are followed completely and research is conducted ethically.
The development of federal research regulations and of codes of ethics for professional societies in the social and behavioral sciences has been heavily influenced by several famous examples of serious ethical lapses that occurred before regulations existed. These are described below.
The Milgram Obedience Study. In the early 1960s, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram recruited people to participate in a study that was supposedly about learning. Participants were asked to administer test questions to an individual located in another room, whom they met prior to starting. If a question was answered incorrectly, the participant was told to administer a shock to the individual. The voltage of the shock increased with each incorrect answer. As the shocks increased, the individual in the other room receiving the shocks would scream and ask the participant to stop. However, the researcher, who was in the room with the participant, would simply tell them to continue and to finish asking the remaining questions. What the participants did not know was that the individual in the other room was not another participant but rather a confederate: that is, someone hired by the researcher to pretend to be in pain. What Milgram was really testing was whether and to what extent the participants would continue to obey the researcher, even when they heard pleas to stop. Some participants stopped after hearing their victim’s protests; but most continued, demonstrating the potential strength of obedient tendencies. Milgram’s study contributed greatly to our understanding of human psychology. However, these experiments upset some participants and have been criticized by the scientific community as psychologically harmful as well as uncomfortable, manipulative, and embarrassing. Even worse, Milgram failed to adequately debrief study participants; he did not explain the reasons for the deception and addressing their emotional distress.
The “Tearoom Trade” Study. In the mid-1960s, Laud Humphreys, a graduate student in sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, concealed his identity as a researcher and served as a lookout for male strangers having sex in public restrooms—a phenomenon referred to at the time as the “tearoom trade.” By volunteering to act as a lookout, a common practice, Humphreys was able to observe men leaving the scene and getting into their cars; he would then write down their license plate numbers in order to learn their names and home addresses. He later visited some of the men at their homes, where he gathered additional demographic information about them and their families by pretending to be conducting a health department survey. Some praise Humphreys’s work, published in 1975, which provided data to dispel the prevailing stereotype of homosexuals as deviants. Most of the men Humphreys followed were otherwise average members of society and, in some cases, upstanding community role models. Although there is no evidence that anyone was directly harmed or outed by the study, many sociologists have criticized Humphreys’s behavior as an extreme invasion of privacy.
The Stanford Prison Study. In the early 1970s, psychologist Philip Zimbardo recruited students at Stanford University to participate in a study exploring the reasons for conflict between military guards and prisoners. Participants were assigned roles as either guards or prisoners and were placed in a simulated prison environment intended to last all day and night for two weeks. After several days, numerous participants—both guards and prisoners—expressed a desire to stop because they became so upset by the role-playing. Initially, Zimbardo would not allow the participants to leave the simulated prison environment, which was a clear violation of the principle of respect for persons. Eventually, the research was stopped after six days.
Unfortunately, ethical lapses and controversies in research are not just a historical problem. They continue to happen. Several examples of more recent controversial social and behavioral sciences studies are included in the References and Resources section for Part 1. For example, concerns have arisen about researchers’ knowledge of and even participation in illegal activities (Goffman, 2014) as well as exploitation of study participants (Good, 1991).
More questions? See #21, #48, and #61.
Question #8 How Do Standard Ethical Practices for Research Vary Among Academic Disciplines in the Social and Behavioral Sciences?
Although the federal research regulations were initially formulated for medical research, they also apply to social and behavioral sciences research. However, the regulations do not specifically address all methods and approaches used by social and behavioral science researchers. To provide additional guidance, professional scientific societies including the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, and the American Anthropological Association have issued discipline-specific ethical codes for research. These codes can be found on the associations’ websites; some are listed in the References and Resources section.
In general, there is a great deal of agreement among professional codes of research ethics across the many disciplines that fall under the broad umbrella of social and behavioral sciences, although certain fields apply different research methodologies or encounter populations that may require specific ethical consideration. For example, deception is a common practice in social psychology research. The American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct delineates conditions that must be met in order for deception of research participants to be ethically permissible, and it offers guidance on debriefing research participants who have been deceived. For research in educational settings, researchers follow the Code of Ethics of the American Educational Research Association, which addresses the unique issues that arise when teachers conduct research with their own students or subordinates.
Professional codes of ethics are not enforceable, but they are necessary for the ethical implementation of research. A professional code’s detailed examination of specific issues pertaining to a particular discipline provides guidance regarding the acceptable and expected behavior of researchers using discipline-specific methods and approaches.
More questions? See #4, #33, and #61.
Question #9 Who Is Responsible for Ensuring Research Is Conducted Ethically?
All persons involved in conducting research, whether they are the lead researcher of a study (called the principal investigator, or PI), or a research assistant working for the PI, are obligated to follow all the ethical rules for research. However, the PI has primary responsibility for what happens during the research. Students conducting research for their thesis or dissertation may have a faculty advisor, but the student has primary responsibility for the protection of research participants. No matter who funds the research, who is conducting it, and what specific form of review is required by an institutional review board (IRB), researchers (PIs, research assistants, and student investigators) must adhere to the basic principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.
Federal research regulations are enforced through a system of local review by an IRB. An IRB is a committee that reviews research to ensure the safety and well-being of human research participants. IRB is the name