The Importance of Ethics in Research

Ethics can be regarded as a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analyzing complex problems and issues and also the idea of ethics as a field of study or moral philosophy. An ethicist according to Resnik 1998 is one whose judgment on ethics and ethical codes has come to be trusted by a specific community, and more importantly is expressed in some way that makes it possible for others to mimic or approximate that judgment.  However the author also argues that not necessarily all standards of conducts can be ethical.

Before one can identify the ethical issues that comes in research there is a need to have at least a working account of what research is. For readers who are engaged in research this question may seem too obvious to need an answer.  It is simply what we do. However, such a definition is needed in order to distinguish research from related activities such as audit or journalism, which fall outside the scrutiny of research ethics committees, and it is surprisingly difficult to find a definition that distinguishes satisfactorily between these things. There is no doubt that research has greatly augmented and enhanced our lives. Important improvements in human understanding in the social sciences and health sciences have been made as a result of research involving human beings. 

A vital foundation of this Policy is that research can be useful to human society. In order to maximize the benefits of research, researchers must have academic autonomy. Academic autonomy includes freedom of inquiry, the right to disseminate the results of that inquiry, freedom to challenge conventional thought, however, with academic freedom comes responsibility, including the responsibility to ensure that research involving humans meets high scientific and ethical standards that respect and protect the participants. There is a corresponding responsibility on the part of institutions to defend researchers in their efforts to uphold academic freedom and high ethical, scientific and professional standards. Research is a step into the unknown. Because it seeks to understand something not yet revealed, research often entails risks to participants and others. These risks can be trivial or profound, physical or psychological, individual or social.

History offers unfortunate examples where research participants have been needlessly, and at times profoundly, harmed by research, sometimes even dying as a result. Ethical principles and guidelines play an important role in advancing the pursuit of knowledge while protecting and respecting research participants in order to try to prevent such occurrences.