Midterm exam

Responsible research: research misconduct

Plagiarism is considered one of the primary instances of research misconduct. In the presentation, The Grey World, plagiarism is defined as Plagio: La apropiación de las ideas o resultados de otras personas sin su autorización o sin dar crédito por la tarea realizada .

• Is this definition adequate for all instances of plagiarism?
• Are all instances of plagiarism also instances where copyright has been violated?
• Why is avoiding plagiarism important for the responsible conduct of research?

Irbs and the belmont report

In its discussion of research involving human subject, the Belmont Report outlines three principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Working with these principles, the Report's authors derive three framework considerations for evaluating research projects: informed consent, risk-benefits analysis, and selection of subjects. In this question, you will demonstrate an active knowledge of these three principles by deploying a framework based on using informed consent, risk-benefits analysis, and selection of subjects (avoiding unjust discrimination).

• Before the Milgram experiments were carried out, a group of psychologists were asked to predict how many teachers/subjects would go all the way to the end and give the learner what they thought were life-threatening and highly painful shocks. The consensus was that most would stop the experiment early on when the learner first began to protest. But the actual results went contrary to these predictions. Over 60 percent of the teachers went all the way and gave the learner the maximum shock.
• Milgram argued that his research demonstrated a propensity to delegate moral authority for one’s immoral actions to those in positions of power and authority. Proving this hypothesis through his experiments would seem to contribute greatly to social welfare and wellbeing; it would seem important to know this important fact about human behavior.
• Using the principles and framework provided by the Belmont Report and playing the role of a member of an Institutional Review Board, do you think that these experiments satisfy the basic requirements of IRBs?

Helpful considerations

• Milgram's experiment involves a deception. What are the ethical implications of this deception according to the Belmont Report's framework?
• Milgram argued that his experiment would cause temporary discomfort to the subjects but that this would be remedied in post-experiment interviews and debriefings. Do you think that this is a realistic claim?
• Do the framework rules of informed consent and beneficence conflict with one another in judging the acceptability of this experiment. If so, what can be done to address this conflict?