ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR

Examples: You find some good images on the web that would look good on your site.  You copy and paste them to your blog.

Almost everybody needs to learn from the other, also all of us looking for good material for our blog. If we found something good, share it with other people is a good idea. If we have a good reference and give the original author a good credit, putting good images in our website or blog is acceptable.

Examples: You are in a hurry to finish an assignment and you find the perfect explanation of a difficult concept on Wikipedia. You decide to copy it into your work.

I think copying thing from other is not a ethical behavior in this example. Because the motive of coping this is only because you don’t have time to finish not to share the good idea to make the world better.

Completing the assignment is our responsibility, we have to spend to do the research, structure the knowledge for what we learn and do the assignment. Not copy it from the other person or Wikipedia.

Examples: You are a medical researcher and you think you have discovered a new drug that cures lung cancer.  It worked well on mice although a few of them died of heart problems. You want to test it on people.  You recruit 100 lung cancer patients into your treatment program. You don’t tell them about the new drug.  You treat 50 patients with usual drugs and 50 with the new drug to see which is better.

I think we don’t need to tell the patient which drug they are having, and this is an ethical behavior. Because if we let the patient know which kind of drug they are having. Some people would think new drug is better than the old one and make the research not accurate.  

Examples: You are doing your PhD about drug abuse among students.  You interview 30 students about their drug use. You discover that one of the students is actually a fairly big time dealer and you report him to the police.

As we discover a drug dealer, we must report him to the police no matter we are in a research project or not. So to perform this kind of research, we have to prevent recording the identity of any subject. Otherwise we don’t have any way to do this kind of research.

Examples: You are a researcher looking at the effect of violent computer games on children.  You recruit 20 children into your study. Over a month you regularly show them images of violence to see if it has an adverse effect on their behavior.  One of the children becomes quite distressed each time and so you stop showing her images and drop her from the study.

Showing violent computer game to children is an unethical behavior. Because it could cause an unpredictable result to the children. To perform this kind research, we better collect sample from the child already playing violent games, but not give them the violent game.

Examples: You want to research how easy it is to hack into your organization’s computer system by persuading people to divulge login and password details.  You recruit a small team to ring up key people in the organization and persuade them to give either their own or their boss’s details.

To do this kind of IT security research or testing, we must define the scope of the project in advance. We need to have a list of procedure to control the researcher activity such as what level of hacking is acceptable. And show this to all people amount the organization to let them know what will happen and collect they approval. As the research process, all the research mush stick to the plan, the leader of the project must make user everyone has fellow the procedure.

Examples: You are doing an initial research in area of a town where may bars and pubs are located, to estimate the level of problematic social behavior in the area. your research is independent from the police, because you want to observe their behavior as well. You observe both abusive and violent behavior.

I think we need to prevent any abusive and violent behavior. So, if we don’t report that is an unethical behavior. Before starting the observation, we need to define a bottom line in advance. Such as if we see getting bitten, we must report to the police. This can allow us to finish our research and no body will get serious injure.