Ethical Issues in Companies: Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace. Health and safety in the workplace. Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide their research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, the possibility of harm, and the communication of results.
In light of these ethical controversies, the Declaration of Helsinki was established to inform biomedical researchers about the principles of clinical research. 3 This statement highlighted a tripartite guide to good clinical practices that includes respect for the dignity of the person; research should not override the health, well-being and care of subjects; the principles of justice. The Publication Ethics Committee (COPE) was also founded in 1997 to address breaches of research and publication ethics. 4 How do we apply all of these principles in our daily research? This article will discuss different ethical issues in research, including the ethical design and approval of the study, data analysis, authorship, conflict of interest, and redundant publication and plagiarism.
I have also included two case scenarios in this article to illustrate common ethical issues in research and publication. According to COPE, “good research must be well-adjusted, well-planned, properly designed and ethically approved. Conducting research to a lower standard may constitute misconduct. To achieve this, a research protocol must be developed and complied with.
All collaborators and collaborators must carefully agree on this, and the precise functions of each team member must be specified from the start, including issues of authorship and publications. Research should try to answer specific questions, rather than just collecting data. It is the researcher's responsibility to analyze the data properly. While inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct, intentional omission of the result can lead to misinterpretation and mislead readers.
The fabrication and falsification of data constitute misconduct. For example, in a clinical trial, if a drug is found to be ineffective, this study should be reported. Researchers tend to underestimate negative research outcomes,5 and this is partly due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, which funds the clinical trial. To ensure adequate data analysis, all sources and methods used to obtain and analyze the data must be fully disclosed.
Failure to do so may lead readers to misinterpret the results without considering the possibility that the study is not powerful enough. The discussion section of an article should mention any issues of bias and explain how they have been addressed in the design and interpretation of the study. There is no universally accepted definition of authorship, 6.It is generally accepted that an author should have made a substantial contribution to the intellectual content, including the conceptualization and design of the study; the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data. The author must also assume the responsibility of certifying that the manuscript represents a valid work and assume public responsibility for the work.
Finally, the author usually participates in the writing or revision of the manuscript, as well as in the approval of the submitted manuscript. Collecting data, editing grammar and language, and other routine work alone do not merit authorship. It is crucial to decide from the beginning of research planning who will be credited as an author, as a collaborator and who will be recognized. It is also advisable to read carefully the “Advice to Authors” of the destination magazine, which can serve as a guide on the subject of authorship.
These interests, where appropriate, should be discussed in the early stages of the investigation. Researchers must make an extra effort to ensure that their conflicts of interest do not influence the methodology and outcome of the research. It would be useful to consult an independent researcher, or the Ethics Committee, on this topic if in doubt. When publishing, these conflicts of interest must be declared to the publishers, and readers will judge for themselves whether the research results are reliable.
On the other hand, plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of other people's published and unpublished ideas, including applications for research grants, to the submission with “new authorship” of an entire article, sometimes in a different language. National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20894. Government agencies that fund or commission research often publish codes of conduct for researchers or codes of ethics. They also need to know what it is that they are accepting. In other words, the psychologist should, as far as possible, explain in advance what it entails and obtain informed consent from the participants.
However, it is not always possible to obtain informed consent. When it's impossible for the researcher to ask real participants, a similar group of people can be asked how they would feel about participating. The interrogation should take place as soon as possible and be as complete as possible; experimenters should take reasonable steps to ensure that the participants understand the interrogation. Types of deception include (i) deliberate deception, p.
ex. Use of confederates, manipulations staged in field scenarios, misleading instructions; (ii) deception by default, p. The researcher should avoid misleading participants about the nature of the research, unless there is no other alternative, and even then an independent expert would have to consider it acceptable. However, there are some types of research that cannot be conducted without at least some element of deception.
However, participants should be deceived as little as possible, and any deception should not cause distress. Researchers can determine if participants are likely to feel distressed when a deception is revealed by consulting culturally relevant groups. If the participant is likely to object or grieve once they discover the true nature of the research at the time of interrogation, then the study is unacceptable. If you have obtained the informed consent of the participants through deception, then they will have agreed to participate without really knowing what they were accessing.
The true nature of the investigation must be revealed as soon as possible, or at least during the interrogation. Some researchers argue that deception can never be justified and oppose this practice, since (i) it violates a person's right to choose to participate; (ii) it is a questionable basis on which to build a discipline; and (iii) it leads to distrust of psychology in the community. Challenging research ethics will also reduce the credibility of your research, since it's difficult for others to trust your data if your methods are morally questionable. An IRB is a committee that checks whether research objectives and research design are ethically acceptable and follow the institution's code of conduct.
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