National Statement on Ethical Conduct †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the National Statement on Ethical Conduct. Answer: Introduction In the contemporary world of social research, ethical decision-making is paramount and highly significant in realizing success. Traditionally, social research mainly focused only on how people were affected by taking part in research. Today, the researcher has given obligations and responsibilities in considering the effect of the research findings on both respondents and the communities at large (Suki Moria 2012). This evolution in social research was realized after anti-racist, feminist and gay liberation social movements between 1960s and 1970s challenged the traditional approach (Suki and Moria 2012). Ethics in social research is a topic that has greatly aroused interest to me a student over time. Previously, in the workshops, my research question was: Why is ethical consideration so important in social research? Based on my study of social science research and workshop material, I realized that several ethical challenges or misconduct are bound to occur in the process of carryin g out a research. This is because social research process highly involves a relationship between the researcher and human participants. According to Suki and Moria (2012),ethical decision making in these social researches normally come to play in deciding to conduct a research in a specific area, formulating research questions, sampling ,data collection among respondents, data analysis and presentation of the findings among others. In relation to the research question, this research looks to address the ethical issues of social research thus improving people confidence in research. Research ethics is a science of morality, where those who are involved determine values for regulating the human behavior there in.Besides researchers own preferences and beliefs, other factors influence research decision making, with ethics as the key focus(Suki and Moria 2012).For example the government, ethical agencies, people and group rights, professional code of conduct. This paper will also provide examples of cases of ethical misconduct in research and address these foundational units that influence ethical decision making in soci al research. In the course of my study, specific ethical issues have come up, raising debates and technicalities. This issues are such as informed consent of human participants in a research, respect for human rights, concealed research, nature of ethical regulation and dealing with vulnerable groups such as children and people with mental health challenges. In various capacities, these issues will be elaborated in this paper. Research ethical misconduct cuts across all research disciplines and so common rules have been developed to manage the ethical issues. Fundamental parties or units such as the government, universities, institutions and agencies have policies governing research in relation to ethics. They also work collectively in maintaining integrity of social research, such that research process and results are valid. For example, it is a requirement that any research the has human participants should be approved by the institutions Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) before commencement. As it is, ethical issues have become a critical element of social research. In Australia, all researches involving human subjects must be compliant to a statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. University policies on research require researchers to comply with this statement. It has a set of guidelines made in harmony with the National Health and Medical Council Act 1992.According to the statement, human related research must have respect for people, maximize benefits, minimize harm, participants must be treated equally and no harm should be done. In this case, harm may be physical or psychological, resulting from ether actual participation or publication of research findings. Unlike the case of developed nations such as Australia, developing countries such as Indonesia have for long lack ethics regulatory committees, which posed a challenge to international students seeking education in developed countries. However, with time Indonesia has come up with ethical research regulations. In 2012,the Association of Health Researchers in Indonesia prepared an Ethical Code Researchers in the Health space, consisting of 30 regulatory articles. Like other international regulations, several of these articles relate to protection of human participants in the research. The Indonesian Law of Health also states that the health Minister is responsible for protecting human research participants. This indicates regulation of researchers by the government of Indonesia. The government regulation further provides for issues such as international association in research, use of vulnerable persons, use of animals before trials on humans and compensation for harm inflicted on a p articipant among others.Currently,Indonesia has up to52 institutional ethics committees, distributed across medical schools, dental schools, public health, research institutions,polytechnical colleges and teaching hospitals. Examples of ethically controversial social research In 1963, Milgram set an experiment in a laboratory in an effort to find out why a person would hurt another if the person thought they had been ordered to do so(Suki and Moria 2012).It focused on conflict between obeying an order from an authority and personal conscience. Stanley alluded to the defense based on obedience by the accused persons for acts of genocide of World War II, for example Adolf Eichmann (McLeod 2007).During the Nazi era of World War II, Germans really perpetrated war crimes in the name of obeying orders. Milgram put up an advertisement in the newspaper in search of participants, who were to participate in the study at the University of Yale. The participants were to be males only aged between 20-50 years. The participants had to be paired and so they drew lots to find a teacher and a learner for the experiment. Milgram and team fixed the draw such that by default all participants became teachers, while learners were Milgrams associate, posing as a real participan t. The teacher and experimenter positioned themselves in a room with the learner in a room next door. The experimenter was also an actor and not Milgram. The teacher was to control an electric shock generator with switches of 15volts, 375volts and 450 volts that represented slight shock, severe shock and XXX respectively. The experiment aimed finding out how easily an ordinary person could be influenced in committing a crime and how far the person would go in obeying an order of harming another person. To begin with, the learner, strapped to chair with electrodes, was given a list of paired words, which he was supposed to learn after which the teacher was to name a word in the list while the learner responded correctly. A wrong answer would amount to an electric shock by the teacher. Shock levels were to be increased each time. The learner on the other hand was to deliberately give more wrong answers than right ones. In the event the teacher failed to induce a shock, the experimenter would give the following orders: Please continue, you required by the experiment to continue, continuing is essential for and the only choice you have is to continue. The findings were such that 65%of participants proceeded to 450 volts, the greatest level while all the participants made it to 300 volts.Having conducted many more experiments with slight variations where necessary, Milgram concluded that the likelihood of ordinary people following orders by a higher authority is high. Right to withdraw. A researcher in any research has a responsibility to let the respondent or participant know that they are free to withdraw in case they feel the need to, irrespective of payment. Contrary to this provision, Milgram did not give his respondents an option of withdrawal. The experimenter gave four orders to the teacher in case he failed to induce a shock. Of the four orders, there was no option of leaving. Deception. A research participant has a right to disclosure of full information. In this case, the participants believed that they were actually shocking the learner which was not the case. In addition, they were not aware that the learner was an associate of Milgram. Protection. The participants had a right to protection from any harm, yet they were subjected to extremely stressful situations that could cause psychological harm. Actually, many were visibly disturbed as evidenced by signs such as sweating, trembling and biting lips among others. Three of them experienced uncontrollable seizures while many desperately asked for a chance to withdraw. This case study explores the scientific ethical misconduct or fraud by Dr Hwang and how the Korean media organizations failed to report the accusation of misconduct against Hwang.Actually,most of them defended Hwang.Between 2004 and 2005,Hwang hit the Korean and international news as a hero for publishing articles on cloning human stem cells in science magazine. The government of Korean recognized Hwang as a supreme scientist and awarded Him millions of dollars. However, after the 2005 publication, a former researcher and author of the 2004 publication left the team. This researcher the worked in collaboration with PD-notebook media and reported cases of ethical fraud in Hwangs research(Kim and park 2013).The report by PD notebook stated that Hwang and team had unethically obtained human eggs and made up data that was published in the 2015 article(Park et al.2009). Following the report by PD notebook in 2005,a battle Hwang network and PD notebook over the allegations of unethical acc usation of eggs, mishandling the lab team, data fabrication and conflict of interest(Kim and park 2013).This brought about controversies an eventually Hwang network collapsed. Further to the allegations, Seoul National University (SNU) carried out a research on the allegations of possible scientific fraud by Hwang, and confirmed that the clone human stem cell lines did not exist (Kim and park 2013). Several ethical misconduct came up in relation to Hwang and team. Number one, data use in both publications in science was fabricated, and therefore deceptive. This was evidenced in research reports by SNU and the prosecutors office, which indicated data fabrication as a key misconduct. A total of 11 cloned cell lines were fake, including all experimental processes(Kim and park 2013).Number two, unethical practices were connected to authorship of the two science papers. Hwang appointed Ky-yong Park, advisor of Korean president for Science and Technology, as his co-author. In her capacity as advisor of the president, Park accorded Hwang and team funding and policy favors(Kim and park 2013.For example she took part in creating the Supreme Scientist Program which named Hwang a supreme scientist. Number three,Hwangs experiment did not apply informed consent of its participants, who were women giving their eggs. 121 women took part without knowledge that the eggs were to be applied in Hwa ngs research. They were also not informed of the possible side effects of the process of extracting eggs. Two women in the research team were also allegedly forced to contribute their eggs. Further to these, 96 women were paid for the ova extraction process, which shows that Hwang and team took advantage of needy women financially. Number four was mis management of research funds. The Korean government and major Korean corporations gave funding of 40 and 6 million dollars respectively to Hwang research. Unfortunately, the prosecutors found out that Hwang directed much of the funds to his personal accounts and other 63 foreign accounts. Despite claiming that he used his personal account for lab operations, the account was found to have bought several personal things including his wifes car and gifts. In addition,Hwang was found to have laundered research funds through false account, a thing that is illegal in Korea.Finally,Hwang research was found to mishandle the students and resear chers. They also had no access to off days as Hwang best known for the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday and Friday rule (Kim and park 2013). This ethical misconduct by Hwang was a wakeup call for the Korean government. There was a national failure and it needed to be addressed immediately.Organizations in Korea, the government, universities, agencies and research bodies embarked on research reforms (Kim and park 2013). Government guidelines became well instituted and institutions were required to form ethics regulatory committees.In addition,the government established a division of integrity team of research, meant to regulate research bodies and universities. In conclusion, this paper has outlined the ethical issues mainly involved in social research. It has clearly elaborated on these issues especially by aid of examples. The paper has further addressed the fundamental institutions responsible for regulating ethical issues in social research. It has been clear that any social research has potential to raise social challenges. Especially since, it not only matters how the researcher handles Management participants but also the manner of presenting research findings. It is also clear that the strategy for handling ethical issues in social research is having solid regulatory framework to regulate research. Societal morals are also key in handling this challenge since cultural preferences vary from one community to another. References Bezuidenhout, L 2014, 'Moving Life Science Ethics Debates Beyond National Borders: Some Empirical Observations', Science Engineering Ethics, 20, 2, pp. 445-467. Jordan, SR 2014, 'Research integrity, image manipulation, and anonymizing photographs in visual social science research', International Journal Of Social Research Methodology, 17, 4, pp. 441-454. Kim, J, Park, K 2013, 'Ethical Modernization: Research Misconduct and Research Ethics Reforms in Korea Following the Hwang Affair', Science Engineering Ethics, 19, 2, pp. 355-380. Komi?, D, Marui?, S, Marui?, A 2015, 'Research Integrity and Research Ethics in Professional Codes of Ethics: Survey of Terminology Used by Professional Organizations across Research Disciplines', Plos ONE, 10, 7, pp. 1-13. McLeod, S. A.,2007, The Milgram Experiment. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. Harpercollins. National Health Research Systems and Regulations for Ethical Research Management in Indonesia.Retrieved from https://www.fercap-sidcer.org/newsletter/2013/12/PPT/04%20Suriadi%20Guwanan-PPT.pdf National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007)-Updated May 2015. Retrieved from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines-publications/e72 Park,J,Jeon,H,Logan, R,A 2009,The Korean Press and Hwangs fraud.,Public Understanding of Science,18,6,pp.653-669. Suki,A and Moria,K 2012,Researching Society and Culture.,Third Edition,pp58-73