The practice of science versus the uses of science

When you think of “ethical research” you might picture the IRB or a risk/benefit analysis. That’s good – that’s a huge part of ethical research, and something we hope you remember from this textbook and your course!

However, there’s more to ethical research than just the ins and outs of how it’s done. Research ethics involves examining both the way that research is conducted and how the findings will be used. In this section, let’s think a little more about the second part.

Doing science the ethical way

As you now know, researchers must consider their own ethical principles and follow those of their institution, discipline, and community. We’ve already considered many of the ways that social scientists strive to ensure the ethical practice of research, such as informing and protecting subjects, but the practice of ethical research doesn’t end once subjects have been identified and data have been collected. Social scientists must also fully disclose their research procedures and findings. This means being honest about subject identification and recruitment, data collection and analyzation, as well as being transparent with the study’s ultimate findings.

If researchers fully disclose how they conducted their research, then those who use their work to build research projects, create social policies, or make decisions can have confidence in the work. By sharing how research was conducted, the researcher assures their readers that they have conducted a legitimate study and that they didn’t simply come to whatever conclusions they wanted to find. A description or presentation of research findings that is not accompanied by information about research methodology is missing some relevant information. Sometimes methodological details are left out because there isn’t time or space to share them. This is often the case with news reports of research findings. Other times, there may be a more insidious reason that that important information isn’t there. This may be the case if sharing methodological details would raise questions about the study’s legitimacy. As researchers, it is our ethical responsibility to fully disclose our research procedures. As consumers of research, it is our ethical responsibility to pay attention to such details. We’ll discuss this more soon.

Honesty in research is facilitated by the scientific principle of replication. Ideally, this means that one scientist could repeat another’s study with relative ease. By replicating a study, we may become more (or less) confident in the original study’s findings. Replication may prove extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible, to achieve with long-term ethnographic studies. Nevertheless, replication sets the standard that all social science researchers should provide as much detail as possible about the way conclusions are reached.

Full disclosure also includes being honest with oneself and others about the strengths and weaknesses of a study. Being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your own work can help a researcher make reasonable recommendations about the next steps other researchers might consider taking in their inquiries. Awareness and disclosure of a study’s strengths and weaknesses can also help highlight the theoretical or policy implications of one’s work. In addition, openness about strengths and weaknesses helps readers evaluate the work and decide for themselves how or whether to rely on its findings. Finally, openness about a study’s sponsors is crucial. How can we effectively evaluate research without knowing who paid the bills?

The standard of replicability along with openness about a study’s strengths, weaknesses, and funders enable those who read the research to evaluate it fairly and completely. Knowledge of funding sources is often raised as an issue in medical research, but medical researchers aren’t the only ones who need to be honest about their funding. For example, if we know that a political think tank with ties to a particular party has funded some research, we can take that knowledge into consideration when reviewing the study’s findings and stated policy implications. Lastly, and related to this point, we must consider how, by whom, and for what purpose research may be used.

Using science the ethical way

Science has many uses. There are many ways that science can be understood and applied. Some use science to create laws and social policies, while others use it to understand themselves and those around them. Some people rely on science to improve the life conditions of themselves and others, while others may use it to improve their business or other undertakings. In any case, there are ethical ways to use science. We can use it to learn about the design and purpose of studies we want to utilize and apply. We can recognize the limitations of our scientific and methodological knowledge and analyze how this impacts our understanding of research. Further, we can learn to apply the findings of scientific investigation to the proper, relevant cases and populations.

Social scientists who conduct research on behalf of organizations and agencies may face additional ethical questions about the use of their research, particularly when the organization controls the final report and the publicity it receives. There is a potential conflict of interest for evaluation researchers who are employees of the agency being evaluated. A similar conflict of interest might exist between independent researchers whose work is being funded by some government agency or private foundation.

So who decides what constitutes ethical conduct or use of research? Perhaps we all do.

Being a Responsible Consumer of Research

Even if you never actually act as a researcher yourself, you’ll be immersed in research findings for your whole life, and there are ethical responsibilities to that too. Being a responsible consumer of research requires that you take seriously your identity as a social scientist and as a member of society. Now that you are familiar with how to conduct research and how to read the results of others’ research, you have some responsibility to put your knowledge and skills to use. Doing so is in part a matter of being able to distinguish what you do know based on the information provided by research findings from what you do not know. It is also a matter of having some awareness about what you can and cannot reasonably know as you encounter research findings. In your general life, you might want to make decisions based on research findings, and others might look to you as a leader, whether that is in a formal capacity (such as if you’re a supervisor at your job) or in more informal settings (like if you’re a parent).

When assessing social scientific findings, think about what information has been provided to you. In a scholarly journal article, you will presumably be given a great deal of information about the researcher’s method of data collection, their sample, and information about how the researcher identified and recruited research participants. All these details provide important contextual information that can help you assess the researcher’s claims. If, on the other hand, you come across some discussion of social scientific research in a popular magazine or newspaper, chances are that you will not find the same level of detailed information that you would find in a scholarly journal article. In this case, what you do and do not know is more limited than in the case of a scholarly journal article – but what’s stopping you from looking for the original article? Remember from our earlier chapters that there are ways to get research article access even after you leave your school. Email the author, for example!

In addition to the methods, take into account whatever information is provided about a study’s funding source. Most funders want, and in fact require, that recipients acknowledge them in publications. But more popular press publications may leave out a funding source. In this Internet age, it can be relatively easy to obtain information about how a study was funded. If this information is not provided in the source from which you learned about a study, it might behoove you to do a quick search on the web to see if you can learn more about a researcher’s funding. Findings that seem to support a particular political agenda, for example, might have more or less weight once you know whether and by whom a study was funded.

There is some information that even the most responsible consumer of research cannot know. Because researchers are ethically bound to protect the identities of their subjects, for example, we will never know exactly who participated in a given study. Researchers may also choose not to reveal any personal stakes they hold in the research they conduct. Neither of these “unknowables” is necessarily problematic but having some awareness of what you may never know about a study does provide important contextual information from which to assess what one can “take away” from a given report of findings.

Finally, remember that one study is not the end-all-be-all for a question, even a very good study. Consider the body of evidence and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different methods being used. Talk with others who are curious about the topic and see how your readings differ. Who knows – maybe you’ll be inspired to do some of your own research to contribute to a conversation too.