Research ethics has to do with both how research is conducted and how findings from that research are used and by whom. In this section, we’ll consider research ethics from both angles.

Doing Science the Ethical Way

As you should now be aware, researchers must consider their own personal ethical principles in addition to following those of their institution, their discipline, and their community. We’ve already considered many of the ways that social scientists work to ensure the ethical practice of research, such as informing and protecting subjects. But the practice of ethical research doesn’t end once subjects have been identified and data have been collected. Social scientists must also fully disclose their research procedures and findings. This means being honest about how research subjects were identified and recruited, how exactly data were collected and analyzed, and ultimately, what findings were reached.

If researchers fully disclose how they conducted their research, then those of us who use their work to build our own research projects, to create social policies, or to make decisions about our lives can have some level of confidence in the work. By sharing how research was conducted, a researcher helps assure readers that he or she has conducted legitimate research and didn’t simply come to whatever conclusions he or she wanted to find. A description or presentation of research findings that is not accompanied by information about research methodology is missing some relevant information. Sometimes methodological details are left out because there isn’t time or space to share them. This is often the case with news reports of research findings. Other times, there may be a more insidious reason that that important information isn’t there. This may be the case if sharing methodological details would call the legitimacy of a study into question. As researchers, it is our ethical responsibility to fully disclose our research procedures. As consumers of research, it is our ethical responsibility to pay attention to such details. We’ll discuss this more in the section “Using Science the Ethical Way.”

The requirement of honesty comes not only from the principles of integrity and scientific responsibility but also out of the scientific principle of replication. Ideally, this means that one scientist could repeat another’s study with relative ease. By replicating a study, we may become more (or less) confident in the original study’s findings. Replication is far more difficult (perhaps impossible) to achieve in the case of ethnographic studies that last months or years, but it nevertheless sets an important standard for all social scientific researchers: that we provide as much detail as possible about the processes by which we reach our conclusions.

Full disclosure also includes the need to be honest about a study’s strengths and weaknesses, both with oneself and with others. Being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own work can help a researcher make reasonable recommendations about the next steps other researchers might consider taking in their inquiries. Awareness and disclosure of a study’s strengths and weaknesses can also help highlight the theoretical or policy implications of one’s work. In addition, openness about strengths and weaknesses helps those reading the research better evaluate the work and decide for themselves how or whether to rely on its findings. Finally, openness about a study’s sponsors is crucial. How can we effectively evaluate research without knowing who paid the bills?

The standard of replicability, along with openness about a study’s strengths, weaknesses, and funders enable those who read the research to evaluate it fairly and completely. Knowledge of funding sources is often raised as an issue in medical research. Understandably, independent studies of new drugs may be more compelling to government agencies that regulate drug manufacture than studies touting the virtues of a new drug that happen to have been funded by the company who created that drug. But medical researchers aren’t the only ones who need to be honest about their funding. If we know, for example, that a political think tank with ties to a particular party has funded some sociological research, we can take that knowledge into consideration when reviewing the study’s findings and stated policy implications. Lastly, and related to this point, we must consider how, by whom, and for what purpose research may be used.

Using Science the Ethical Way

Science has many uses. By “use” I mean the ways that science is understood and applied (as opposed to the way it is conducted). Some use science to create laws and social policies; others use it to understand themselves and those around them. Some people rely on science to improve their life conditions or those of other people, while still others use it to improve their businesses or other undertakings. In each case, the most ethical way for us to use science is to educate ourselves about the design and purpose of any studies we may wish to use or apply, to recognize our limitations in terms of scientific and methodological knowledge and how those limitations may impact our understanding of research, and to apply the findings of scientific investigation only in cases or to populations for which they are actually relevant.

Social scientists who conduct research on behalf of organizations and agencies may face additional ethical questions about the use of their research, particularly when the organization for which an applied study is conducted controls the final report and the publicity it receives. Consider a researcher hired by an organization to conduct leadership effectiveness research. While such research may not be inherently problematic, the potential conflict of interest between evaluation researchers and the employer being evaluated certainly exists. A similar conflict of interest might exist between independent researchers whose work is being funded by some government agency or private foundation.

So who decides what constitutes ethical conduct or use of research? Perhaps we all do. What qualifies as ethical research may shift over time and across cultures as individual researchers, disciplinary organizations, members of society, as well as regulatory entities such as institutional review boards, courts, and lawmakers all work to define the boundaries between ethical and unethical research.