James Vicary claimed to have introduced subliminal messages with big advertisement effects in 1957 when he conducted an experiment with very quickly flashing messages in the movies of a cinema in New Jersey. The messages projected phrases like “Drink Coca…
Science fraud – Dishonesty and forgery in research
As scientists, we like to think that science is a bastion of virtue, untouched by science fraud. The perception is that, other than junk science, science should be beyond reproach, unsullied by lies and propaganda. Results should always be regarded…
Scientific misconduct as an ethical violation in research
Scientific misconduct is defined as “the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research“. To determine scientific misconduct the code of scholarly conduct would have to be defined. The code of scholarly conduct…
Research regulations and the Helsinki declaration
Research Regulations are a code of ethics that governs how research should be conducted. Research is conducted across many disciplines. It is used to define public policy, treatment protocol even for marketing products. Research uses different populations and species to…
Advantages and disadvantages of stem cell research
The debate of the pros and cons of stem cell research clearly illustrate the difficult ethics evaluations researchers sometimes must do. All scientists must consider whether the positive effects from their research are likely to be significantly higher than the…
Ethical considerations for using animals in research
Animals used for experimentation and research are always a hot topic of debates. The use of animals in research is prevalent because they share at least 200 common illnesses and diseases with humans. Animals are used in research or experimentation…
Privacy in Research
Confidentiality Privacy in research refers to the confidentiality afforded to participants in the research. Why is Confidentiality Important in Research? Science depends on research participants to volunteer information regarding individual beliefs and actions on a host of topics. A participant…
Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-72)
1932-72 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was initiated because known treatments for syphilis, in 1932, had shown little demonstrated effect, in addition to being toxic and dangerous. The dependent variable in the Tuskegee Experiment (the knowledge researchers wanted), was whether persons…
Informed Consent Policy
As shown by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment, an informed consent policy is an essential part of any scientific research. All three of these studies broke the rules in different ways. In the…
Deception and research
Ethics is one of the most crucial areas of research, with deception and research increasingly becoming a crucial area of discussion between psychologists, philosophers and ethical groups. There is no doubt that, for many psychological and sociological experiments, the less…