Research Ethics

Ethics in research is hard to separate from the political, economic, administrative, and legal considerations. Most assuredly, there's a philosophical basis to research ethics, but instead, we'll focus on the practical considerations. A point to remember, however, is that there's no such thing as perfectly ethical research. In fact, all research is inherently unethical to some degree. This is because you're using the most powerful tools science has to offer in getting at truth or some needed change, and with your results, somebody's going to be proven wrong or lose out in the power struggle. Research is all about power and sometimes creating inequalities where a placid consensus may have existed before. There's also no such thing as totally harmless research. Somebody, usually your subjects, is going to be harmed, either psychologically, socially, physically, or economically. Their privacy is, and should be, invaded to get any useful information (why do research on the obvious, surface characteristics of people?), and this is psychological harm. Socially and physically, you're harming them by taking up their time with your silly research, and economically, you're exploiting them by not paying them for their contribution. You, the researcher, will go on and become famous writing a book about them, but they will always remain lowly research subjects. Ethically, research is just a whole awkward and asymmetrical situation overall.

Let's consider the concept of "value-free" social science research. A lot of people advocate this as the sine quo non of research ethics, as if impartiality and objectivity were all there is to it. Actually, there are a number of models for the ethical purpose of research (Rule 1978):

There's also probably a Self-Imposed Morality Model where the researcher simply refuses to cave in to any pressures or ideology, but I leave it to you in deciding if such a person gets much work. Research is a lot like a thesis or dissertation in grad school; once the first draft is in the hands of your committee, it no longer is yours, but takes on a life of its own, reflecting the many interests of gatekeepers and stakeholders all around you.

Historically, governments have had to put serious restrictions on researchers. In fact, the origin of codes of research ethics can be traced to the NUREMBERG CODE, a list of rules established by a military tribunal on Nazi war crimes during World War II. The principles outlined in the Nuremberg Code include:

The Nuremberg Code was followed by the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and the 1964 Helsinki accord. All three documents are intended to forever ban anything like what Nazi doctors did -- torture, maim, and murder -- to captive subjects in concentration camps.

In 1971 (and revised in 1981), the U.S. government initiated guidelines for all federally funded research. Although some departments, like Justice, eventually developed their own guidelines, most federal agencies followed the lead of HEW (now HHS) because this list of rules could be applied generically to both medical and nonmedical research. The HEW GUIDELINES were:

One of the outcomes of the HEW guidelines was the establishment of INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARDS (IRBs) at colleges and universities across America. IRBs regularly disapprove or delay research at most universities. At first, these institutions were seen as a hindrance on academic freedom by faculty researchers, but they came to be accepted, especially after 1981 when the revised HHS guidelines exempted most social science and criminal justice research from full review by creating a category of "expedited" review. Klockars and O'Connor (1979) boiled down the three basic principles governing most criminal justice research about this time:

Support for exempted and expedited research caught on in other social sciences, not just criminal justice. Current federal guidelines exempt from IRB review almost any surveys or interviews, as long as care is taken to ensure unique identifiers, or link files (matching subject's real names to a code number), are kept secret by the researcher, there is no risk of criminal or civil liability, and the research doesn't deal with sensitive issues, like unreported crime, drugs, sex, or alcohol. Unobtrusive research is almost always exempt. The field of education enjoys more exemptions; anything related to variation on normal educational practices, such as curricula and instructional changes, is exempt. The field of psychology likewise has more freedom to experiment with perception, cognition, game theory, and test development, although the idea of manipulation of subjects is looked at closely by review boards. The point is you're not going to get a federal grant nowadays unless your research proposal has been approved by a local university's Institutional Review Board, and the best news you can hear from them is that your research is exempt or expedited.

Justice department grants have their own special rules. They pretty much adhere to HHS guidelines, but add concerns for embarrassment, criminal liability, and confidentiality. Embarrassment is regarded the same as harm and considered as how tactfully the researcher words the questions. "How many times have you beat your wife last month" might be considered an embarrassing question whereas "How many times did an instance of domestic violence erupt" would not be embarrassing. This poses limitations on operationalization in much criminal justice research. Potential embarrassment is also a standard used in filmmaking if the researcher plans to take any video. Participants in NIJ-sponsored research are also supposed to be protected from criminal prosecution if they admit to anything during the research (42 U.S. Code 3789g), but most researchers draw the line if they find out, for example, that one of their subjects plans to kill somebody. If the criminal justice researcher anticipates a dangerous situation arising from their research, they had better obtain a certificate of confidentiality from NIH and comply with NIJ provisions on privacy and confidentiality (45 Code of Federal Regulations 46 and 28 CFR 22). Filling out such forms activates a little-known "shield law" which protects the researcher from government prosecution for any liability or complicity in what their subjects do. It may also protect the researcher from any civil suits brought by survivors or family. It will not protect the researcher from libel or slander if the researcher goes public, and it will not protect the researcher from disclosing information to a grand jury or in response to a court order. Researchers and their subjects are not a privileged relationship at law. They can be compelled to reveal their sources. A catch-22 therefore exists. If the researcher is ordered by a grand jury or court to reveal what they know, say a research subject who told them "I'm going to kill that [insert libelous remark here] ", the researcher cannot be held liable for the killing but can be held liable for libel and slander. Often, it's the university the researcher is affiliated with that has to pick up the tab for legal costs and libel/slander judgments, and it's extremely important that the researcher is a tenured professor with academic freedom rights.

The problem of political regulation of research is even more aggravated when one tries to do cross-national research. Something as simple as public opinion surveys are banned in most countries, including most of Asia, eastern Europe, and Africa. In a number of nations (Greece and Chile, for example), sociology and anything called "sociological" is banned as subversive. Anything called "criminology" is banned in most of Latin America, especially if the research has got anything to do with drugs, police brutality, corruption, or juvenile sexual behavior. There's an organization called COSSA (Consortium of Social Science Associations) which is working to remedy the problem of "forbidden" research topics in foreign nations, but they have a long way to go. As with all grantsmanship, a couple of phone calls and the right connections go a long way. The CIA and NSA have long hired researchers to do national security work for them under the guise of academic research. Sometimes, researchers are duped into doing this kind of work without knowing who's really funding their research. Most ethical researchers will not accept such assignments, or if they find out, terminate their research, but many accept and stay on because military and national security grants are lucrative. Under the Export Control Act of 1985, researchers who break the blanket rule not to disclose their secret funding or tick off a national security agency in some way can be forever barred from traveling overseas for scholarly or academic purposes. Even in the U.S., often government-sponsored research cannot be released to the public until a political appointee approves the final release document.

There's no shortage of bad research examples, but we'll limit ourselves to five of the most well-known cases in social science. It's customary to note that these cases are frequently cited in the literature, talked about in classrooms, and even have movies or documentaries about them.

CASE #1: the CYRIL BURT Affair - Cyril Burt was a famous British criminologist in the early 20th century who wanted to prove Lombroso and Goddard right that there were "born criminals" and that they were feeble-minded or had low intelligence. You'll sometimes find him mentioned in criminology textbooks as the "father of twin studies." After it was discovered that Goddard faked his photographs to make the eye sockets of Irish immigrants look more deeply receded, it was also discovered that Burt faked his data and published phony tables of numbers showing such people had low IQs. The affair is memorable as a lasting tribute to the "publish or perish" environment in academics, where professors, like Burt, need to get promoted by rushing into print with research results. Mistakes like the Burt Affair are similar to other scams, frauds, plagiarisms, and coverups that still go on in research today, most notably in anthropology.

CASE #2: TEAROOM TRADE -- was the name of a book published by a sociologist named Laud Humphreys in 1970 who posed as a "watchqueen" in public restrooms to observe homosexual behavior. After every liaison where an old man would seduce some "chicken hawk" with money for an oral sex experience, Humphreys would jot down the license plate number of each old man's vehicle. Then, he had a friend in the police department trace the addresses. He would then visit the old men at home and pressure them into giving him an interview. The case stands as a classic example of invasion of privacy.

CASE #3: OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY -- was the name of a book by psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1974 who wanted to see how far people would be willing to turn up the dial, if ordered to do so, on a machine that pretended to give electrical shocks to people in the next room. You'd be surprised how many people were willing to go all the way, even though some broke down in tears after hearing fake screams coming from the other room. The experiment stands as testament to doing psychological harm.

CASE #4: the TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS STUDY -- was conducted from 1932 to 1974 and involved the withholding of penicillin from Black male sharecroppers so the government could find out the long term effects of syphilis. Similar experiments went on with the U.S. military involving nerve gas and nuclear radiation. The CIA also performed bizarre mind control experiments involving LSD, ESP, hypnosis, and surgery. The moral of all this is not to conduct secret testing on unsuspecting subjects.

CASE #5: ZIMBARDO'S PRISON SIMULATION - was a study by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1972 that took Stanford University undergrads and made some of them guards and some of them prisoners in a mock underground dungeon for a planned two week stay. The experiment had to be cancelled after six days because by then, the student-guards became quite sadistic, really getting into their roles. The prisoners were also becoming quite mental. The experiment tells a story about psychological harm and informed consent, since the subjects didn't know what they were getting into.

There are many, many more examples, but these are the most famous ones. The only other one I think deserves mention is the 1954 Wichita Jury Study which involved criminal justice researchers using a wiretap, or "bugging", a jury room to find out what goes on when juries deliberate. Although a lot of significant knowledge was gained by this study, it led to a wiretap law in 1956 that prohibited jury "bugging" even if jurors consent.

Economic regulation is the issue of who sponsors your research as well as how much money you get. Be advised that with grants, you never get the full amount you ask for, but you can sometimes persist and get more than what is first offered. A lot of grants will not let you hire assistants, especially student assistants. Most grants will not pay for first-class travel, and travel is one of the first things cut, so you might have to ride Greyhound if you have to go anywhere. Many grants today require a matching amount from your own employer, sometimes in cash and other times in kind. Expect to run out of money before your research is finished, and don't be surprised if your employer eats up some of your grant money. Your employer will also set up administrative procedures to doll the money out to you on a requisition basis.

The quickest and easiest way to experience economic exploitation in research is to go work for one of those so-called "think tanks" in criminal justice. There's hundreds of them, all non-profits, and all with names like the National Institute for something-or-other. They are usually located around the Washington D.C. beltway, and they constantly keep their eye out for possible RFPs (Requests for Proposals) by following the Federal Register (proceedings of Congress), so they have a firsthand shot with grant proposals at-the-ready long before any announcement is made to the public. I had a smart friend in college who went to work for one of these firms because he thought that's what a Ph.D. should do, and only those who can't do it teach instead, but he was an oddball and ate dry Ramen noodles; I mean "dry" ones for snacks. Never mind his pocket protectors.... Anyway, this kind of work is called CONTRACT RESEARCH, as in being a subcontractor for the government.

Contract research, or think tank studies, vary greatly in quality, lack peer review, and are short on solid evidence but long on suggestions (Neuman & Wiegand 2000). Think tank agencies, whether Institutes or Foundations, all have an agenda of their own to publicize, and publicity is what drives the research. The audience is not the scientific community, but politicians (who get free copies of reports) and any other consumer who stumbles upon their website and order page for their publications (although some reports are free, usually after a year or two of shelf life for not selling well). The ideology is apparent in most of these research reports as the researcher is forced to advocate some policy recommendation that fits or meshes well with the avowed aims of the think tank. The media also tends to treat many think tank reports as gospel, and some think tank researchers obtain quite a bit of media notoriety. Unfortunately, much better research never gets published or ends up in a data repository like the ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research).

It's the ethical duty of a researcher to get their results published somewhere. This is called dissemination of your research, and it requires that you find the most appropriate and scholarly outlet that you can. Most major universities have their own in-house publishing company (such as Kansas State Univ. Press and so forth) you should look at as a last resort. The exception to this is law school journals which you should look at as your first choice. In criminal justice, it's possible to rank the journals in terms of their scholarly reputation. As a researcher, you should get a handle on which journals are ranked more highly than others.

An economic problem exists with doing campus-based research. Say, you're interested in doing a study on campus crime, however, the university administration thinks that the image of the school as well as its economic fortune (in terms of admissions) will be affected by your study. You'll find the same sort of economic rationale behind city administrators who attempt to block your study on the community gang problem because the city doesn't want to admit they have a gang problem.

Don't succumb to the temptation of paying your subjects for participating in research. Always use volunteers. Research is, after all, a gift of knowledge that your subjects freely give to you and you're supposed to freely give to the world. There are three ways, and three ways only, to encourage participation ethically (Senese 1997):

Laws often exist, depending upon jurisdiction, to safeguard the rights of various people in research activities. These populations include, but are not limited to inmates, crime-stricken communities, children, pregnant women, and those with disabilities. There are strict limits on the types of research that can be conducted on inmates or prisoners. Under no circumstances is a researcher allowed to even suggest that by participating in research, it will reflect favorably on their record when they go up for parole or early release. The same sort of rule applies to criminal suspects and defendants; you can't promise them any leniency of any kind, or even that you will tell the judge about it, or anything like that. You can say that your research might benefit the whole class of inmates, prisoners, suspects, or defendants as a group. And, you can say that you're experimenting with something innovative or creative involving improvement of the justice system. NIJ's CFR 45 also requires that, with inmates, the study present no more than the common inconveniences common to the situation of a typical prisoner. You cannot, for example, design an experiment, involving conditions of confinement below the minimum standard of living at the jail or prison.

With certain crime-stricken communities, you might have what are called equity concerns, which means that if one neighborhood is receiving the benefit of some new service, another neighborhood is not receiving the benefit. Most Justice majors are familiar with the Kansas City Patrol Experiment in which certain sectors got intensive police protection and other sectors got none. You can't do these things anymore according to most laws. If you must, and cannot get the project approved as an exemplary experiment (requiring federal approval), then consider what is called a crossover design, which switches neighborhoods around in place, from control group to experimental group, so that everyone eventually receives the benefit. You don't have to keep collecting data if you don't want to, since you're only doing it as part of an equity component of your project.

Children as research subjects present special problems, and it is best to avoid using them unless you cannot. First of all, a legal guardian or parent must grant you written permission to conduct your research. Secondly, any authorities in charge of any grounds or locations which involve your research (such as schools, daycare, or recreation centers) must also give their permission for you to conduct your research. It's probably not possible to list the complete network of agencies involved with most juveniles, but suffice it to say that, as researcher, you're going to need to at least touch base with a lot of people. It's best to ask permission from the juveniles too.

Pregnant women, those with disabilities, and those who are incompetent in some way (such as mental retardation) are generally not allowed to participate in research. This tends to limit research on forensic populations, such as serial killers, for example, but it depend upon how psychotic they are. The FBI profilers can get away with it because they argue the good outweighs the harm, but the average researcher is probably going to need the permission and/or supervision of clinical psychologist, at least. Several psychometric (and personality) testing instruments are not to be administered by anyone other than a competent psychometrician or psychologist. It's best to get medical advice when using such subjects.

If I had to boil research ethics down into a nutshell, this would be it -- informed consent. A consent form doesn't have to be complicated. At a bare bones minimum, all it has to contain is the following paragraph:

I have been informed and understand the personal and professional risks involved by participating in this study. I agree to assume those risks, and my participation is purely voluntary, without any promise of special rewards as a result of my participation.

A full blown consent statement would contain the following (adapted from Neuman & Wiegand 2000):

REVIEW QUESTIONS:
1. What is the relationship between academic freedom and research ethics, in your own words?
2. What other ethical issues, other than those mentioned in this lecture, exist in the Humphreys, Milgram, and Zimbardo examples?
3. What's the real or critical difference between anonymity and confidentiality?
4. What would you do if subjects treated the information they gave you as intellectual property?
5. What do you regard as your primary defense against unethical conduct in research?

QUIZ:
Construct what ethical safeguards you think are appropriate for doing research with the following groups:
1. Victims of rape
2. Police officer stress
3. Effects of inmate diet on prison violence
4. Juvenile firesetters

PRACTICUM:
1. Using the Internet Resources (below), find and evaluate any one code of ethics for a profession of your choice. Critique each element in that code as being above or below, better or worse, than the Nuremberg, HEW, or Klockars and O'Connor standards (either one of these three). Overall, do you think this profession's code will lead to less stringent CFRs or regulation by the government, or do you think the code is good enough to begin trusting researchers in that profession?

PRINTED RESOURCES
Elliston, F. & N. Bowie. (eds.) (1982). Ethics, Public Policy and Criminal Justice. Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain.
Hagan, F. (2000). Research Methods in Criminal Justice and Criminology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Humphreys, L. (1970). Tearoom Trade. Chicago: Aldine.
Jones, J. (1982). Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. NY: Free Press.
Joynson, R. (1989). The Burt Affair. London: Routledge.
Lasley, J. (1999). Essentials of Criminal Justice and Criminological Research. NJ: Prentice Hall.
Klockars, C. & F. O'Connor. (eds.) (1979). Deviance and Decency. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority. NY: Harper.
Neuman, L. & B. Wiegand. (2000). Criminal Justice Research Methods. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Reynolds, P. (1982). Ethics and Social Science Research. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rule, J. (1978). Insight and Social Betterment. NY: Oxford Univ. Press.
Senese, J. (1997). Applied Research Methods in Criminal Justice. Chicago: Nelson Hall.
Zimbardo, P. (1972). "The Pathology of Imprisonment" Society 9:4-6

Last updated: Oct 09, 2006
Not an official webpage of APSU, copyright restrictions apply, see Megalinks in Criminal Justice
O'Connor, T. (Date of Last Update at bottom of page). In Part of web cited (Windows name for file at top of browser), MegaLinks in Criminal Justice. Retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/rest of URL accessed on today's date.