Info on ethical vs. unethical research. (1 Viewer)

[Ted Lee]

hi all -

a friend of mine is doing a paper on etical vs. unethical research. she's hoping there may be some info on the web on this topic.

i did a search on google, but nothing really promising turned up.

any assistance is appreciated!

thanks,

ted

 

[MikeM]

Link removed by admin, should be be a good start.

 

[DennisHP]

Try here:
Link removed by admin.

 

[Thik Nongyow]

Let us steer clear regarding political ones, shall we?

 

[DennisHP]

Why don't you start then?

 

[Jack Briggs]

Update: Let's try this again without the political links. Thanks.

 

[Nigel McN]

There was one in New Zealand which is now refered to as 'The Unfortunate Experiment' where for 16 years (1966-82 iirc) a university professor tested his theory on the developement of cancer. He divided women patients with early signs of cancer into 2 groups. The control group recieved the normal treatment, the test group were not told of their condition and were if anything, just given placebos, neither group knew they were part of an experiment. I think you can guess the outcome.

This bought on an overhaul of the ethics boards in universites and hospitals when it was made public.

Is that the sort of thing you were after?

 

[Shayne Lebrun]

See if you can't find anything on Stanley Milgram. He was smacked around BIG TIME for his experiments into human reactions to authority.

Basically, one of his more famous experiments involved taking two people. One would be strapped into an 'electric chair' and told to scream convincingly at the appropriate times. The other would be ordered to administrate electric shocks, or at least what they thought were electric shocks.

There was also a teacher who did a really really neet experiment with her class, after being asked about how Nazis got away with what they did. I think her name was Jane Elliot. Go read about that, it involved separating kids by their eye colour. The amazing thing was that it took only hours to work.

 

[MikeF]

Go to a university library -- or just ask any university's Department of Psychology for their experimental research policy. This type of thing should not be hard to come by.

 

[Ted Lee]

thanks for the info guys...i'll pass it along to my friend.

 

[Brian Perry]

There was story recently about research showing that most arthroscopic knee surgeries are a waste of money. How did they find this out? They performed the "real" surgery on some patients and pretended to do the surgery on other patients (there was a small incision made to look as though the real thing was done). The result was that both groups reported the same amount of pain relief and flexibility recovery. The article mentioned that the difficulty in such experiments is finding the control group patients.

 

[Bhagi Katbamna]

The classic unethical research is the syphillis study where they took syphillis patients, did not give them any treatment to observe the natural course of the disease. Because of this study, there are hospital boards that oversee how ethical a study is.

How did they find this out? They performed the "real" surgery on some patients and pretended to do the surgery on other patients (there was a small incision made to look as though the real thing was done). The result was that both groups reported the same amount of pain relief and flexibility recovery. The article mentioned that the difficulty in such experiments is finding the control group patients.

That is actually an ethical study because the it was voluntary, randomized and the patients were told that they may be the ones that get the sham operation. If the patients were told they were getting the operation and then got a sham operation, then it would be unethical.

 

[Nigel McN]

I imagine in that case where your knee surgery was fake, you could always do it for real later,... once someone has died of cancer there isn't much you can do to fix that up.

 

[Brian Perry]

Bhagi,

My mistake...I agree that it would be ethical in that case. But I wonder if the results were slightly tainted due to the knowledge that you might be given the "sham" operation.

 

[ChrisMatson]

I work in the research industry. Try these links:
http://www.fda.gov/oc/gcp/default.htm
http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html
http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/nuremberg.php3
http://www.iupui.edu/~resgrad/Human%.../ethics3A.html
I hope they are helpful.
-Chris

 

[Ted Lee]

thx again all! chris - i'll definitely forward those links.

 

[Danny R]

The hotest ethical debate currently is on cloning and stem cell research. You should find lots of information if you search those fields.

A big ethical debate that is still raging is regarding the Nazi medical files. Many people want to have them opened because they do have a lot of useful information that obviously could not have been gathered in any other fashion. However of course many people think that any use of such material gives a some justification of the holocaust, and just isn't worth the price.

Simularly, it was recently found out that medical specimens of tissues harvested during this time were still in use as late as the 1990's, because the source of the tissue was never identified.

 

[andrew markworthy]

See if you can't find anything on Stanley Milgram. He was smacked around BIG TIME for his experiments into human reactions to authority.

Just to put this into perspective, Milgram was scrupulous in his original studies to try to exclude individuals who would be at risk from stress, etc. The biggest shock was not the experimental method, but the finding that anyone would obey authority to the extent they did. In fact, there were numerous psychological experiments conducted in the 'early days' of the subject (i.e. up to the late 60s) which would never be allowed to be run today.
The best single guide to ethics in psychology can be found at the Link Removed There is also the British Psychological Society webpages, which may also be of interest.