Research Ethics

Introduction
Research ethics are on essential component to every step of the
research process.
Failure to reflect upon ethics, or engagement in unethical behavior on
the part of a research, can result in at best considerable
embarrassment and an irreparably damaged professional reputation
or at worst significant harm to those who have participated in our
research or to the researcher.
Where do we draw the boundary between ethical and unethical
research practices?

Ethical dilemmas
Ethics, funders, and asking the wrong questions
whom are we willing to accept funding to conduct research?
Is there a conflict of interest between research funders and our
potential research findings?
(Eg.1: Tobacco companies funding research on the potential health
consequences of cigarette smoking)
(Eg.2: Large oil companies funding research questioning the link between
carbon emissions and human-induced climate change)
Do we privilege certain groups while failing to give voice to others?

Ethical dilemmas
1.) Plagiarism and academic dishonesty
The ethical violations that students are most familiar with are likely to
be that of plagiarism and falsification of evidence.
Plagiarism is the act of taking someone elses words or ides and
presenting them as your own.
It is important to remember that plagiarism can be both intentional and
unintentional.
It can result from an intentional effort to deceive or it can result from
sloppy not taking and inadvertent mistakes during the writing-up
process.

Ethical dilemmas
In order to guard against the risk of accidental plagiarism, it is important
that you always record a bibliographic reference along with any notes you
might take from a piece of research or any other sources of information.
It is helpful to include the full bibliographic information, so you do not
have to search for this information again later.
In sum, coming up with your own system to organize your notes, whether
on paper of digitally, it necessary to ensure that you give appropriate credit
in your own work to the ideas and words of others.
The best way to avoid inadvertent plagiarism is to take good notes and
provides in-text references.

Ethical dilemmas
2.) Falsification and distortion of evidence
In some extreme cases, researchers e en falsified or fabricated data.
(E.g. Hwang Woo Suk in 2006, Haruko Obokata in 2014)
Although simply inventing data or falsifying results is clearly an outrage
against the scholarly community, sometimes researchers inadvertently
alter their research data through sloppy note taking during interviews
or through coding errors.
In relation to interview data, one tool to ensure your transcripts are
accurate and to provide for an additionally level of transparency, is to
secure the consent of your interview subjects to have the interview
recorded.

Ethical dilemmas
If this is not possible, written interview consent forms will provide
evidence that you have actually conducted your interview.
In the absence of a consent form, make sure your record as much
information about your interview as possible. Things like the location,
date, and time of the interview, in addition to recording with whom the
interview has taken place, all serve to provide you with evidence that your
interview actually took place.
In addition to misrepresentation of data occurring as a result of outright
fraudulent behavior or sloppy record keeping, sometimes students might
find themselves tempted to distort another authors argument.
This kind of distortion does nothing to advance theoretical debates and only
undermines your credibility.

Human subjects: Institutional review

boards and ethics committees
For some researchers in North America, Australia, or the UK. even
before the research process begins, researchers are asked to receive
ethical clearance from their institutions before carrying out research
on human subjects. The need to receive ethical clearance is
increasingly common in IR.
There was a renewed focus on ethics in research that involved h***
subjects after WW2 as the horrors of Nazi-era scientific experiment
carried on people were widely publicized in the context of the
Nuremberg Trials.

Ethical Codes of Conduct

Research should be designed, reviewed and undertaken to ensure
integrity and quality. (Transparency in sources, does not contain
plagiarism.)
Research staff and subjects must be informed fully about the purpose
methods, and intended possible uses of research, what their
participate in research entails, and what risks, if any, are involved.
The confidentiality of information supplied by research subjects and
the anonymity of respondents must be protected.
Research participants must participate in a voluntary way, free from
coercion.
Harm to research participant must be avoided.
The independence of research must be clear, and any conflict of
interest or partiality must be explicit

Perspective on Ethics
Often institutions have distinct cultures in relation to how they
implement their respective ethical guidelines.
Bryman set out a useful typology of ethics cultures. (1). the
universalist, (2). situationalist, (3). violationalists, and (4). anything
goes approaches.

Perspective on Ethics
Universalist is the perspective that you will most likely encounter as a
starting researcher in IR enrolled in an undergraduate program. In the
absence of years of experience working with research participants and
being new to the research process, faculty members you encounter will
probably insist that you adhere strictly to ethical codes imposed by your
institution.
Universalist approaches to research ethics are often applied to protect the
institution for which a researcher is conducting research from potential
legal liability for harm or to protect the researcher from doing harm to
themselves.
Universalist

thus hold firm that ethics codes cannot under any

circumstances be violated.

Perspective on Ethics
if you are a more advanced researcher, and you are being asked to present
your proposed research to an institutional ethics review board, you might
find yourself encountering a more situationalist approach to research
ethics.
In such cases, you will be asked to justify your proposed research in writing
and submit what may look like an application to conduct your research
project to a panel of researcher who will evaluate the ethical implications of
your proposed course of action. Situationalist approaches emphasize a
course-by-case evaluation of potential transgressions and may even
consider whether or not significant knowledge will be created through your
proposed research .

Perspective on Ethics
A violationist approach assumes that all research includes some
minor violations. In short, such an approach assumes that social
science researchers are unable to avoid engaging in behavior that
can be defined as unethical. For those who adopt a violationist
approach, ethical codes of conduct are of little value because
compliance with such codes is viewed as either impossible or
impractical.

Perspective on Ethics
Those who adopt anything goes approach argue that the kinds of
deception that we can engage in as social scientists can hardly be
considered serious when taken against the backdrop of the types of
activities routinely engaged in by the state police or security services.
Such an approach to ethics imagines social science researchers as
agents who can potentially challenge the states monopoly on power
and knowledge; however, at the same time very little concern for
potential researcher participants is evident.