1. Research Methods Ithaca College
Ethics in Research
Research Methods
Ithaca College

2. Goals for the Chapter
Describe past and current problems with ethics in research
Understand the Ethical Guidelines of APA
Learn how to evaluate ethical issues in research

3. Unethical Research Practices—Past and Present
American researchers withheld treatment from black airmen with syphilis from the 1920s to the 1960s
The Nazis conducted horrific research during World War 2
American scientists exposed developmentally disabled children to radiation without parental consent in the 1950s
Tuskegee research
Lack of informed consent
Deception
Coercion--Participation not voluntary
Physical and psychological harm
No debriefing
Excessive inducements

4. Unethical Research Practices—Past and Present
The U.S. military exposed black and Puerto Rican soldiers, and Japanese-American citizens to mustard gas to examine its effects on them.
Researchers exposed terminally ill patients to radiation without informed consent in the 1950s.
Contemporary researchers have violated norms regarding giving informed consent to participants and patients.

5. Unethical Research Practices—Past and Present
Researchers have engaged in other unethical behaviors
Claiming others’ work as their own (plagiarism)
Falsifying or making up data
Inventing studies that were never done
Adding names to studies that others had done

6. Unethical Research Practices—Past and Present
Some scientists reviewed their own papers under assumed names. [
Mark Hauser of Harvard (psychology and evolutionary linguistics) faked data
Steven Eaton faked data on suitability of drugs for clinical trials and received a three-month prison sentence in Scotland

7. Important Terms Informed consent
Debriefing (dehoaxing and desensitization)
Harm (physical and psychological)
Voluntary participation
Deception
Excessive inducements
Anonymity/confidentiality

8. Tearoom Trade Homework
Evaluation of controversial research

9. Unethical Research Practices—Past and Present
Reasons for unethical behaviors by doctors and researchers
Intense pressure to publish research and to obtain grants
Inadequate mentoring
Some sort of mental disorder

10. APA’s Ethical Standards
Beneficence and nonmaleficence--Working for the benefit of people and avoiding harm to them
Fidelity and responsibility--Support for the discipline and working for the benefit of the community
Integrity--Honest application of psychology in research, teaching, and practice.
Justice--Recognizing the implications one’s actions and striving to make good professional judgments
Respect for people’s rights and dignity--Striving to eliminate biases in dealing with people
Key terms
Aspirational goals
Beneficence
Integrity
Justice
Nonmaleficence
Respect for rights and dignity

11. Recent Ethics Controversy at APA
Ethical principle: Justice—Recognize the ethical implications of their actions and strive to make the best judgments they can
APA said to have colluded with DoD to water down ethical principles
APA presidents implicated
APA CEO, deputy CEO, and ED for Communications resign
Ethics officer fired

12. The Importance of Social Context
Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Studies: Participants thought they were shocking another person, perhaps causing death

13. Milgram’s Shock Generator
Milgram’s Simulated Shock Generator (at the 2008 convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston). The apparatus is housed at the Archives of the History of American Psychology in Akron, Ohio.

14. The Importance of Social Context
Criticism of Stanley Milgram’s research
Deception
Ignoring a potentially negative cost-benefit ratio
Doing long-term harm to the participants psychologically
Eroding confidence in authority figures

15. The Importance of Social Context Milgram’s defense of his research
He consulted with psychiatrists in advance about potential risks to participants; they thought risks were minimal
He desensitized and dehoaxed participants after the study, letting them meet the person they thought they had shocked. This is debriefing.

16. The Importance of Social Context
Debriefing: Informing participants of the purpose of the research, disclosing deception and answering questions about the research
Dehoaxing: Telling participants of any deception used in a study.
Desensitization: Eliminating negative aftereffects that a participant might experience after taking part in a project.

17. The Importance of Social Context
The social context
The research occurred right after World War 2, during which Nazis claimed only to be “following orders.”
In America, people feared that we would become blindly obedient if the Communists came to power.
Society is different now, and such research would probably not be seen as acceptable.

18. Recent/Revisited Criticisms
Debriefing wasn’t universal or complete
There was potential long-term harm
There were methodological problems due to the structure of the shock generator

19. Stanford Prison Study
Zimbardo constructed a jail in the psychology labs and recruited participants.
“Guards” began acting brutally toward the “prisoners.”
The study had to be terminated early

20. Were there Ethical Issues?

21. Methodological Problems
Zimbardo created expectations that guards were “take away their [prisoners’] individuality” (Zimbardo, 2007)
Zimbardo gave tacit approval for the brutality (Gray, 2013)
Zimbardo had a conclusion in mind and set up the study to verify it (Prescott, 2005)

22. Making Decisions about Ethics
Are there ethical issues here?
Personal space invasion in the lavatory
The Tearoom Trade
Urinal study: Middlemist, R., Knowles, E. S., & Matter, C. F. (1976). Personal space invasions in the lavatory: Suggestive evidence for arousal. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 33(5), doi: /

23. Research Ethics: Is Deception OK?
Deception is a common feature in social psychological research
Should psychologists engage in deception?

24. Types of Deception—Active and Passive
Implicit deception: misinforming participants about the reason for their behaviors
Technical deception: misinforming participants about how apparatus is being used in the study
Role deception: misinforming participants about the role of others in the research
Participants don’t mind either implicit or technical deception, but some are bothered by role deception.

25. Issues in Research Involving Deception
Important questions regarding deception and alternative strategies
Will alternative methodologies produce data of equal validity to that involve deception?
Does deception permit the research participant to make an informed consent regarding important aspects of the research?
Will debriefing eliminate the potential for risk or could it cause problems in and of itself?

26. An Article by Diederik Stapel
People like self-consistent feedback because it induces feelings of predictability and control, but they like positive feedback because it induces positive self-esteem. With self-knowledge, people with low self-esteem feel better after negative feedback than after positive feedback, whereas people with high self-esteem feel better after positive feedback than after negative feedback.
Not only psychology—more generally in biomedical research
Erik Smart (University of Kentucky) fabricated or falsified 45 figures in grant applications and publications.

27. The Case of Dirk Smeesters
Suspicious statistics
Two papers retracted
Resignation from his university position
No web pages remain
He claims to have used the so-called "blue-dot technique," in which subjects who have apparently not read study instructions carefully are identified and excluded from analysis if it helps bolster the outcome. According to the report, Smeesters said this type of massaging was nothing out of the ordinary.
Smeesters would usually find collaborators by approaching them at meetings, "during which Smeesters indicated he had access to an excellent lab with a subject pool, allowing him to take care of data collection easily."

28. Doing Things Right
Laurie Santos of Yale University voluntarily asked the journal Developmental Science to withdraw one of her papers because of coding errors.

29. Stuttering
A Compelling Example of Ethics, Theory, Research, and Society

30. A Monster?

31. A Basic 2x2 Design Stutterer Non-Stutterer
Labeled as not being stutterers
Group 1-A
Group 2-A
Labeled as stutterers
Group 1-B
Group 2-B

32. How Do These Terms Relate to the “Monster Study”?
Informed consent
Debriefing (dehoaxing and desensitization)
Harm (physical and psychological)
Voluntary participation
Deception
Excessive inducements
Anonymity/confidentiality

33. The Results
Jim Dyer of the San Jose Mercury News broke the story in 2001, 60 years after the study was done.
He reported that several of the children suffered lasting damage, including those who were initially non-stutterers.

34. Some Important Questions
Is this study ethical?
Would it pass muster if you are on an IRB?
How could the researchers justify their action?
Why did they not publish any of their results?
Passing muster: No informed consent, no compensatory followup, possibility of psychological harm, no debriefing
Justification: Everybody was a behaviorist, so what could be learned could be unlearned. There was no attempt to extinguish the stuttering, although an article in the Village Voice implied that the such attempts were unsuccessful.
“A small price to pay for science.”
No publication: Nazi research versus poor methodology—Some of the supposed non-stutterers showed some evidence of stuttering, so placement in groups may have been troublesome

35. Conclusions Social norms are important here.
The counterarguments have received essentially no coverage: A good scandal is always better than a sober retraction.
Not only does research raise as many questions as it answers, but research leads to stories that reflect the people who tell them.

36. Misinterpretation?
Some speech researchers claim that Dyer misinterpreted the results of the study
The researchers find little evidence that the study had any impact on the children’s speech
There were problems with the categorization of stutters and non-stutters and other methodological questions that make the quality of the research murky.

37. Results
Does this support the claim that people became stutterers?

38. The Implications
Research does not occur in a vacuum, so any time you make controversial claims based on research, you need to consider
Who is telling the story
What the data actually tell you
Why you shouldn’t believe these claims uncritically

39. What You Learned in the Chapter
Describe past and current problems with ethics in research
Understand the potential ethical problems in psychological research
Understand the Ethical Guidelines of APA
Learn how to evaluate ethical issues in research

40. What Happened to the Children?
One woman whom Dyer interviewed and who was featured prominently in the new story claimed that her stuttering resulted from her participation in the study.
She didn’t begin stuttering for 60 years, until either she met her husband or when he died, depending on which account you read.

41. Some Important Considerations
Was the “suppression” of this 1939 research an attempt by the mentor to distance himself from Mary Tudor and from the specter of the Nazis?
Jim Dyer: “…as the world learned of the Nazi medical experiments,…the professor’s associates warned him to conceal his work on the orphans rather than risk comparisons that could ruin his career.”
What actually happened?

42. The “Suppression”
The study has been available in the University of Iowa Library, available to patrons who could, and did, check it out.
It may have been that the files with the participants’ names was off limits. The reporter used his student status to gain access to it.

43. Revisiting the Efficacy of Prayer
Does anybody do research similar to Galton’s?