Psychological research has not always been as ethically strict as it is now. I’m sure we all remember from last year the ethics forms we had to submit for our research report experiment. It was pretty lengthy, and took every element of the study into account. But if you look back into the past of psychology, this is not always the case. There was an experiment in 1939 called The Monster Study, involved the experimenter trying to give orphans a stutter. In many of the cases he succeeded, and some of the children had problems with speech for the rest of their lives. This experiment would obviously not be allowed to happen today, so what happened to get us where we are?
Before the Second World War, there were no guidelines whatsoever for human experimentation, but after the atrocities of the Nazi human testing, this all changed. In 1947 the Nuremberg Code was written as a direct result of these tests. This said that “the voluntary consent of humans is absolutely essential”, and that the benefits of the research should outweigh the risks.
The next advance in research ethics was in 1964, when the World Medical Association wrote the Declaration of Helsinki. This was a set of ethical recommendations for human experimentation, and became the foundation of human research ethics. The main points set out in this Declaration were that animal experiments should come before any humans are experimented on, there should always be a review by an independent committee before the experiment, informed consent is always necessary, only qualified people should carry out experiments, and that the benefits of the research should outweigh the risks. Since 1964, it has been revised six times, but still remains largely the same.
The rules set out in the Declaration were very influential in creating the five general ethical principles, which are:
- Beneficence and Nonmaleficence
- Fidelity and Responsibility
- Integrity
- Justice
- Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity
These are from the APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, created in 1991 and updated in 2002. They are what all psychologists must take into account when creating a study, and it from these we get the considerations like avoiding deception, informed consent, debriefing and right to withdraw at all times that have to be taken into account when we carry out our research. However sometimes this can make designing our studies very difficult. What if we can’t tell the participants what the study is about without ruining it? What about observation studies on something like crowds, should the researcher intervene if it gets violent or allow it to continue? These questions are hard to answer, and just lead to more questions. Do the ends justify the means? Or should be do the ethical thing even if it means our research won’t be as good?
Personally I think ethical guidelines are definitely needed to prevent a return to anyone being able to anything they like. In addition to it being potentially harmful, it would only take one dodgy study for the media to get hold of and the whole reputation of psychology could be damaged. However, whether these ethical guidelines should have as much of an influence of studies as they do is something I’m not sure about. What do you guys think?
References:
Numbers and Psychology 
forcedtwoblog
/ October 28, 2011The guideline were put into place to prevent unethical experiments being conducted. It is possible that if we remove those guild lines that some will still follow them however this would give us too much flexibility when conducting research that we return to our old unethical practices. This is why i say its worth doing the ethical thing although the research won’t be as good.
However, there is always temptation to do the unethical thing when the findings can benefit, these things need to be considered…such as animal testing. Otherwise we may be holding ourselves back or over stepping the ethical line because of the ethical guidelines
In one situation (see http://animaltestingperspectives.org/2011/news-and-interviews/is-animal-research-to-cure-blindness-a-good-thing/) animals-including your household dogs, cats- have been used in stem cell experiments to cure help people with blindness .Some may argue that we can ignore the harm to the animals (note :most are not born blind ) because it could benift people who are blind-its therefore ethical- , however , others may say that the research is not worth conducting if it puts animals at harm-therefore unethical-. I find that this discussion may never end, but in some ways this is good because we are testing the rules of ethics .
http://animaltestingperspectives.org/?gclid=CIyBwpDVi6wCFYQPfAodQ10JqA
emilyjchurchill
/ October 28, 2011Yeah obviously we can’t get rid of the ethical guidelines, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all, but sometimes our research could be improved if we didn’t have to find ways around deception and everything like that. Participants who have been deceived in studies often say they don’t mind, and are sometimes even impressed with clever deceptions. I’ll use a famous example – Milgram. They followed up on his participants and it was found that 84% of them were glad they had taken part in the study, and 15% gave neutral answers. Maybe they were glad to be shown more about themselves?
So yeah, ethics are important, but I think the extent of them is very debatable.
Milgram, Stanley (1974). Obedience to Authority; An Experimental View. Harpercollins. ISBN 0-06-131983-X.
roydeanschlipp
/ October 28, 2011From you’re example you’ve missed out one percent, and that one percent stated that they regretted taking the study. Surely no study should take place if just one person regretted taking part in it. Also many participants suffered anxiety attacks while performing the experiment, so although they did warm up to the study on the year follow up, at the time they can’t have enjoyed it. Do the ends justify the means?
Milgram, Stanley (1974). Obedience to Authority; An Experimental View. Harpercollins. ISBN 0-06-131983-X.
Jessicaaro
/ October 28, 2011I like your choice of topic it’s a nice change from outliers haha. I personally see the ethics becoming like health and safety in the work place, necessary but sometimes taking common sense and thinking for yourself out of life. For example Millgram’s study of obedience would be denied by today’s ethics board but the majority of participants, give or take 1 or 2 were fine afterwards. A good thing was the participants said they learned a lesson by doing the experiment. Psychology experiments are best when representing real life as much as possible and life is not always nice. As long as the participants have a good debrief after such experiments there shouldn’t be a problem.
References
Interview with Millgrams participant – http://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/?p=697
larabarker
/ November 22, 2011Participants today are lucky that these ethical guidelines have been put in place to ensure fairness and protection. If you were to be a participant in 1920 when the Little Albert study took place (http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Little%20Albert.htm), there would not be ethical guidelines to project you from harm. Little Albert was a baby who was tested when he was 9, 10 and 11 months old. He was introduced to a pet rat, whenever he went to touch or hold the rat, the researcher would make a loud noise behind Albert, startling him. The first time he was startled, he jumped and raised his hands up, the second time he started trembling with fear, and the third time he started crying and having a fit.
In modern times, such fear and distress would not be caused to any participant let alone a baby. There is also an issue of consent here-how can a baby consent to being tested? It can be considered unfair that parents make this decision on behalf of their child when we do not know how the experiment could really effect them.
statsblog2011
/ November 24, 2011roydeanschlip, I disagree that if one person regrets taking part then that is reason to have not done it, or not to have replicated if possible. This is because I think at least one person has regretted taking part in every research ever conducted, I know that most of the experiments I have taken part in I have regretted, mainly because they are mundane repetatitive tasks done sat in front of a computer, but does that mean that it should not have been done just because I thought it was a waste of my time? I say no, because the results that they get are going to be used for something, and this is important. And if we do think about Milgrams study, I think it is very good that ONLY one person regretted it!
Jack
/ November 25, 2011Statsblog2011, I am so with you on mundane computer tasks. dear god. However, forcing someone to see their true self or an unknown side when they are not ready for such an enlightenment? Probably not advisable. The little Albert experiment as described by larabarker conveys the true horror that some participants have experienced in the name of science and the importance of consent when carrying out research. Jessicaaro, do we think that if little albert had been given a good ol’ debrief he would have handled life better? Im not big on Health and Safety, but history shows that people will do just about anything if they are coerced or just up for trying something new
bloggenrolla
/ November 25, 2011You make a good point about the monster study being unethical but you fail to mention the benefits gained from the findings of that study. The study was conducted with the aim of disproving the idea that a stutter is genetic or inborn and, although the study was largely unethical, the findings have affected treatment of stuttering by speech therapists, although the study was never published (http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/06/monster-study.php). With this in mind I would say it is wrong to discard any piece of research due to any lack of current ethics it may have as the findings can still be very beneficial.
You touch on the topic of deception as well and this is a very contentious issue for scientific research but I believe that researchers should be allowed to deceive participants as long as they are correctly debriefed at the conclusion of the study. Maybe this seems extreme but lets’s imagine a scenario using the Loftus and Palmer study on eyewitness testimony (http://www.simplypsychology.org/loftus-palmer.html). This study contains a small amount of deception (as many studies do) and this was critical to the success of the study. These results have been beneficial to society and the deception caused the participants no distress. How then can we say that deception should be totally avoided in research?