Ethical Issues in Social Research

Ethics is a part of every society and is entwined in every aspect of daily living, however the meaning of ethics or what is ethical differs. Ethics is commonly associated with morality and Webster’s New world Dictionary defines ethical as “conforming to the standards of conduct of a given profession or group.” Knowing what a particular society considers ethical and unethical is what contributes to living successfully in that society. This is the same for researchers; researchers need to be aware of what is considered ethical and unethical conduct of scientific inquiry. From the time immediately after World War II until the early 1990s, there was a gradually developing consensus about the key ethical principles that should underlie the research endeavor; two events stand out as symbolic of this consensus. The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial following World War II brought to public view the ways German scientists had used captive human subjects as subjects in oftentimes gruesome experiments. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study involved the withholding of known effective treatment for syphilis from African-American participants who were infected. Events like these forced the reexamination of ethical standards and the gradual development of a consensus that potential human subjects needed to be protected from being used as 'guinea pigs ' in scientific research.
There are several reasons why it is important to adhere to ethical norms in research. First, norms promote the aims of research, such as knowledge, truth, and avoidance of error. For example, prohibitions against fabricating, falsifying, or misrepresenting research data promote the truth and avoid error. Second, since research often involves a great deal of cooperation and coordination among many different people in different disciplines and institutions, ethical standards promote the values that are essential to collaborative work, such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness. For