Research Ethics
Research can cause harm if done carelessly — ethics is not bureaucracy, it is about protecting people
📌 Before You Start
Prerequisites: Modules 1–6.
Estimated time: ~45 minutes including the scenario exercise.
What you need: Pen and paper or a Google Doc for the Your Turn scenarios.
By the end of this module you will be able to explain the Belmont Report principles, describe informed consent, distinguish confidentiality from anonymity, and apply ethical reasoning to research scenarios.
💡 The Big Idea
Research ethics is not bureaucracy — it is about protecting people. History has shown that without ethical oversight, research can cause profound, lasting harm to the most vulnerable members of society. Every rule in research ethics exists because someone was harmed.
🔍 Deep Dive
Why Ethics Matters: Historical Abuses
Modern research ethics was built in response to real abuses. These cases should be known by every researcher.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–1972)
The U.S. Public Health Service enrolled 399 Black men with syphilis in rural Alabama, telling them they were being treated for "bad blood." Researchers withheld effective treatment (penicillin) even after it became available, for 40 years, to study the disease's natural progression. No informed consent. Participants were deceived. Many died; their wives were infected; their children were born with congenital syphilis. The study ended only after a whistleblower leaked it to the press.
Milgram Obedience Experiments (1961)
Stanley Milgram told participants they were administering electric shocks to another person who gave wrong answers. The shocks were fake, but participants did not know. Many were visibly distressed and showed lasting psychological harm. The study raised fundamental questions about deception in research: when, if ever, is it acceptable? And what do researchers owe participants after a study that causes them distress?
Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
Philip Zimbardo assigned students randomly to be "guards" or "prisoners" in a simulated prison. The experiment descended into abuse within days. Zimbardo, playing the role of prison superintendent, did not stop it until a graduate student who visited demanded he end it. The experiment was terminated after 6 days (planned for 2 weeks). It is now a case study in researcher bias, role-playing effects, and the failure of ethical oversight.
The Belmont Report (1979)
In response to Tuskegee and other abuses, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects produced the Belmont Report, which established three core principles of ethical research:
1. Respect for Persons
Individuals must be treated as autonomous agents capable of making their own decisions. People with diminished autonomy (children, prisoners, people with cognitive impairments) require additional protections.
In practice: Informed consent. Voluntariness. Right to withdraw.
2. Beneficence
Research should maximize benefits and minimize harms. "Do no harm" is the foundation, but beneficence goes further — actively working to ensure participants benefit or at least are not made worse off.
In practice: Risk-benefit analysis. Stopping a study if harm is found.
3. Justice
The benefits and burdens of research should be distributed fairly. Vulnerable populations should not bear the burdens of research that will primarily benefit others.
In practice: Inclusive research design. No exploitation of disadvantaged groups.
Informed Consent
Informed consent is the process through which a participant voluntarily agrees to participate in a study after receiving complete information about what participation involves.
A valid informed consent must include:
- The purpose of the research in plain language
- What participants will be asked to do and how long it will take
- Any potential risks or discomforts
- Any potential benefits
- How data will be kept confidential
- That participation is voluntary and can be ended at any time without penalty
- Contact information for the researcher and the IRB
Confidentiality vs. Anonymity
| Concept | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Anonymity | The researcher cannot link responses to individuals. Not even the researcher knows who said what. | An anonymous online survey with no identifying questions and no IP address collection. |
| Confidentiality | The researcher knows who the participant is but protects that information from being shared. | An interview where the researcher knows the participant's name but assigns a pseudonym in all reports and keeps data in a password-protected file. |
IRB: Institutional Review Board
An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is a committee that reviews research involving human participants before the study begins. Its job is to ensure the study meets ethical standards and complies with federal regulations.
| Review Level | Who needs it |
|---|---|
| Exempt | Low-risk research (e.g., anonymous surveys on non-sensitive topics, observation in public settings). Still requires IRB approval to be classified as exempt. |
| Expedited | Minimal risk but involves identifiable information or slightly sensitive topics. Reviewed by one IRB member. |
| Full Board Review | Research with significant risk: vulnerable populations, sensitive topics, deception, medical procedures. Reviewed by the full IRB committee. |
At community colleges (SMC, WLAC) and universities, you need IRB approval before collecting any data from human participants for research purposes. Student class projects may be exempt, but check with your instructor.
Vulnerable Populations
Certain groups require extra protections because of their reduced ability to protect their own interests or because they may be susceptible to undue influence:
- Children: Require parental consent AND the child's assent (agreement)
- Prisoners: Coercion concerns (may feel pressure to participate)
- Pregnant women: Protections for both mother and fetus
- People with cognitive impairments: Capacity to consent must be assessed
- Students: Power imbalance if the researcher is also their instructor
Research Integrity
| Violation | What it is |
|---|---|
| Fabrication | Making up data that was never collected. "I recorded 200 participants" when you only had 50. |
| Falsification | Manipulating existing data to change the results. Removing inconvenient data points. Altering images. |
| Plagiarism | Presenting someone else's ideas, words, or data as your own without attribution. |
| Authorship disputes | Including someone as an author who did not contribute, or excluding someone who did. "Gift authorship" (adding a senior researcher's name to get published) is common and unethical. |
Using AI Ethically in Research
AI tools (like Claude, ChatGPT, and others) are increasingly used in academic and research contexts. Ethical use requires:
- Disclose use: Most journals and many instructors require disclosure when AI was used in writing or analysis.
- Do not cite AI as a source: AI-generated text is not a primary or secondary source — it cannot be cited in a reference list. Verify all AI-provided information against real sources.
- Understand limitations: AI can hallucinate (confidently generate false information). Never use AI output as evidence without verifying it.
- Do not submit AI text as your own work: Unless your instructor has explicitly permitted it, submitting AI-generated text without disclosure is a form of academic dishonesty.
📋 Real Example: The Facebook Emotional Contagion Study (2014)
In 2012, Facebook and Cornell University researchers manipulated the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users without their knowledge. Some users saw more negative posts; others saw more positive posts. The researchers then measured whether this affected what users themselves posted.
The finding: Emotional states could be "transferred" through social media — users who saw more negative content posted more negatively. The study was published in PNAS, a prestigious journal, in 2014.
The ethical controversy:
- Did users consent? Facebook's Terms of Service include a data use clause, but users did not know they were research participants.
- The potential for harm: Deliberately making 700,000 people feel more negative without any clinical oversight or safety monitoring.
- Did Cornell's IRB review this? (It was a contested question — some said the research happened at Facebook, not Cornell.)
- The journal added an "Editorial Expression of Concern" after publication, unusual for a published study.
Lessons: The Belmont principle of Respect for Persons requires meaningful consent — not buried terms of service. Scale of impact matters: risks affecting 700,000 people warrant more than perfunctory review. Online research in corporate settings exists in a gray zone that needs clearer ethical standards.
🖐️ Your Turn
What you need: Pen and paper or a Google Doc. About 15 minutes.
Read each scenario below. For each one: (1) identify what ethical rule or principle was violated, and (2) describe what the researcher should have done instead.
Scenario A: The Nursing Student Researcher
A nursing student is studying patients' adherence to medication regimens. She is also volunteering in the hospital ward where the study participants are receiving care. She approaches patients during their care routines, tells them she is collecting data "for a class project," and asks them to fill out a questionnaire. She does not tell them they can decline.
What ethical principles were violated? What should she have done?
Scenario B: The Ambitious Thesis Student
A psychology student is writing his thesis on stress and academic performance. He collects surveys from his classmates. His results show a moderate relationship between stress and GPA, but one participant's outlier response makes the correlation weaker. He removes that participant's data without documenting it, and also does not report the results of his secondary analysis (which showed no significant effect for the male-identifying participants in his sample).
What ethical principles were violated? What should he have done?
Scenario C: The Social Media Study
A communication studies researcher wants to study how teenagers discuss mental health on Reddit. She collects thousands of posts from a teen mental health subreddit (r/teenagers). The posts are public, but many users likely believe they are writing in a relatively private, community space. She quotes several posts verbatim in her published paper, including usernames.
What ethical concerns arise? What should she have done differently?
🧠 Brain Break — 2 Minutes
Reflect on this question:
The researchers in the Tuskegee study were medical professionals who likely believed they were advancing scientific knowledge. The Stanford Prison Experiment was reviewed before it began. Ethics failures often happen not because researchers are evil, but because they prioritize their research questions over the people in their studies.
What systems, habits, or checks might help you avoid putting your research agenda ahead of participant wellbeing in your own work?
✅ Key Takeaways
- Modern research ethics was built on the ruins of real abuses. Every rule exists because someone was harmed.
- The Belmont Report establishes three principles: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice.
- Informed consent must be voluntary, complete, and in plain language. It is a process, not just a signature.
- Confidentiality means the researcher protects identity. Anonymity means the researcher never knows identity. Do not confuse them.
- IRB approval is required before collecting data from human participants in research contexts.
- Research misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism) is career-ending — and harmful to the entire scientific enterprise.
🎯 Module 7 Complete!
You now understand the ethical foundations of research. In Module 8, you will put everything together to plan and communicate a research study.
Continue to Module 8: Writing & Communicating Research →