2.4 The Ethics of Science: First, Do No Harm

Somewhere along the way, someone probably told you that it isn’t nice to treat people like objects. And yet, it may seem that psychologists do just that by creating situations that cause people to feel fearful or sad, to do things that are embarrassing or immoral, and to learn things about themselves and others that they might not really want to know. Don’t be fooled by appearances. The fact is that psychologists go to great lengths to protect the well-being of every research participant, and they are bound by a code of ethics that is as detailed and demanding as the professional codes that bind physicians, lawyers, and accountants. That code requires psychologists to show respect for people, for animals, and for the truth. Let’s examine each of these obligations in turn.

Respecting People

During World War II, Nazi doctors performed truly barbaric experiments on human subjects, such as removing organs from living people or submerging people in ice water just to see how long it would take them to die. When the war ended, the international community developed the Nuremberg Code of 1947 and then the Declaration of Helsinki in 1964, which spelled out rules for the ethical treatment of human subjects. Unfortunately, not everyone obeyed them. For example, from 1932 until 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted the infamous Tuskegee experiment in which 399 African American men with syphilis were denied treatment so that researchers could observe the progression of the disease.

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In 1979, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) released what came to be known as the Belmont Report, which described three basic principles that all research involving human subjects should follow. First, research should show respect for persons and their right to make decisions for and about themselves without undue influence or coercion. Second, research should be beneficent, which means that it should attempt to maximize benefits and reduce risks to the participant. Third, research should be just, which means that it should distribute benefits and risks equally to participants without prejudice toward particular individuals or groups.

The specific ethical code that psychologists follow incorporates these basic principles and expands them. Here are a few of the most important rules that govern the conduct of psychological research:

What are three features of ethical research?

These are just some of the rules that psychologists must follow. But how are those rules enforced? Almost all psychology studies are done by psychologists who work at colleges and universities. These institutions have institutional review boards (IRBs) that are composed of instructors and researchers, university staff, and laypeople from the community (e.g., business leaders or members of the clergy). A psychologist may conduct a study only after the IRB has reviewed and approved it. The code of ethics and the procedure for approval are so strict that many studies simply cannot be performed anywhere, by anyone, at any time because doing so would require unethical experiments that violate basic human rights.

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Respecting Animals

What steps must psychologists take to protect nonhuman subjects?

Not all research participants have human rights because not all research participants are human. Some are chimpanzees, rats, pigeons, or other nonhuman animals. The psychologist’s ethical code specifically describes the special rights of these nonhuman participants, and some of the more important ones are these:

The man in this photo just saw another man slip a drug into a woman’s drink, and he is alerting the bartender. What he doesn’t know is that all the people at the bar are actors and that he is being filmed for the television show What Would You Do? Was it ethical for ABC to put this man in such a stressful situation without his consent? And how did men who didn’t alert the bartender feel when they turned on their televisions months later and were confronted by their own shameful behavior?
© American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

That’s good—but is it good enough? Some Americans consider it unethical to use nonhuman animals in research, and some believe that nonhuman animals should have the same fundamental rights as humans (Singer, 1975). On the other hand, a majority of Americans consider it morally acceptable to use nonhuman animals in research and say they would reject a governmental ban on such research (Kiefer, 2004; Moore, 2003). Science is not in the business of resolving moral controversies, and every individual must draw his or her own conclusions about this issue. But whatever position you take, it is important to note that only a small percentage of psychological studies involve animals, and only a small percentage of those studies cause animals pain or harm. Psychologists mainly study people, and when they do study animals, they mainly study their behavior.

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Some people consider it unethical to use animals for clothing or research. Others see an important distinction between these two purposes.
PAUL MCERLANE/Reuters/Corbis

Respecting Truth

Institutional review boards ensure that data are collected ethically. But once the data are collected, who ensures that they are ethically analyzed and reported? No one does. Psychology, like all sciences, works on the honor system. You may find that a bit odd. After all, we don’t use the honor system in stores (“Take the television set home and pay us next time you’re in the neighborhood”), banks (“I don’t need to look up your account—just tell me how much money you want to withdraw”), or courtrooms (“If you say you’re innocent, well then, that’s good enough for us”), so why would we expect it to work in science? Are scientists more honest than everyone else?

Definitely! Okay, we just made that up. But the honor system doesn’t depend on scientists being especially honest as much as it depends on the fact that science is a community enterprise. When scientists claim to have discovered something important, other scientists don’t just applaud; they start studying it too. When physicist Jan Hendrik Schön announced in 2001 that he had produced a molecular-scale transistor, other physicists were deeply impressed—that is, until they tried to replicate his work and discovered that Schön had fabricated his data (Agin, 2007). Schön lost his job and his doctoral degree was revoked, but the important point is that such frauds can’t last long because one scientist’s conclusion is the next scientist’s research question. This doesn’t mean that all frauds are uncovered, but it does mean that the important frauds are.

Other Voices: Is Psychology a Science?

Is Psychology a Science?

Timothy D. Wilson is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of several popular books, including Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change (2011).
Photo by Jen Fariello, Courtesy Timothy D. Wilson

Nobody can dispute that you are taking a course in psychology, but are you taking a science course? Some critics maintain that psychology fails to meet accepted criteria for what constitutes a science. Timothy Wilson, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, took on the critics by drawing from an appropriate source: the scientific literature (Wilson, 2012).

Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball.

There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the “hard” ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the “soft” ones (psychology, sociology). It is thus no surprise that many members of the general public feel the same way. But of late, skepticism about the rigors of social science has reached absurd heights. The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to eliminate funding for political science research through the National Science Foundation (NSF). In the wake of that action, an opinion writer for the Washington Post suggested that the House didn’t go far enough. The NSF should not fund any research in the social sciences, wrote Charles Lane, because “unlike hypotheses in the hard sciences, hypotheses about society usually can’t be proven or disproven by experimentation.”

Lane’s comments echoed ones by Gary Gutting in the Opinionator blog of the New York Times. “While the physical sciences produce many detailed and precise predictions,” wrote Gutting, “the social sciences do not. The reason is that such predictions almost always require randomized controlled experiments, which are seldom possible when people are involved.”

This is news to me and the many other social scientists who have spent their careers doing carefully controlled experiments on human behavior, inside and outside the laboratory. What makes the criticism so galling is that those who voice it, or members of their families, have undoubtedly benefited from research in the disciplines they dismiss.

Most of us know someone who has suffered from depression and sought psychotherapy. He or she probably benefited from therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy that have been shown to work in randomized clinical trials.

Problems such as child abuse and teenage pregnancy take a huge toll on society. Interventions developed by research psychologists, tested with the experimental method, have been found to lower the incidence of child abuse and reduce the rate of teenage pregnancies.

Ever hear of stereotype threat? It is the double jeopardy that people face when they are at risk of confirming a negative stereotype of their group. When African American students take a difficult test, for example, they are concerned not only about how well they will do but also about the possibility that performing poorly will reflect badly on their entire group. This added worry has been shown time and again, in carefully controlled experiments, to lower academic performance. But fortunately, experiments have also showed promising ways to reduce this threat. One intervention, for example, conducted in a middle school, reduced the achievement gap by 40%.

If you know someone who was unlucky enough to be arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, he may have benefited from social psychological experiments that have resulted in fairer lineups and interrogations, making it less likely that innocent people are convicted.

An often-overlooked advantage of the experimental method is that it can demonstrate what doesn’t work. Consider three popular programs that research psychologists have debunked: Critical Incident Stress Debriefing, used to prevent posttraumatic stress disorders in first responders and others who have witnessed horrific events; the D.A.R.E. antidrug program, used in many schools throughout America; and Scared Straight programs designed to prevent at-risk teens from engaging in criminal behavior.

All three of these programs have been shown, with well-designed experimental studies, to be ineffective or, in some cases, to make matters worse. And as a result, the programs have become less popular or have changed their methods. By discovering what doesn’t work, social scientists have saved the public billions of dollars.

To be fair to the critics, social scientists have not always taken advantage of the experimental method as much as they could. Too often, for example, educational programs have been implemented widely without being adequately tested. But increasingly, educational researchers are employing better methodologies. For example, in a recent study, researchers randomly assigned teachers to a program called My Teaching Partner, which is designed to improve teaching skills, or to a control group. Students taught by the teachers who participated in the program did significantly better on achievement tests than did students taught by teachers in the control group.

Are the social sciences perfect? Of course not. Human behavior is complex, and it is not possible to conduct experiments to test all aspects of what people do or why. There are entire disciplines devoted to the experimental study of human behavior, however, in tightly controlled, ethically acceptable ways. Many people benefit from the results, including those who, in their ignorance, believe that science is limited to the study of molecules.

Wilson’s examples of psychological investigations that have had beneficial effects on society are excellent, but perhaps even more important is his point that much of psychology is based on carefully controlled experimentation using randomization procedures that the critics apparently believe—mistakenly—cannot be applied to the study of human beings. Should psychology strive to come up with general laws like those of physics or try to make precise predictions like those made by the so-called hard sciences? Should psychologists focus on laboratory experimentation or spend more effort attempting to study behavior in everyday life? What methods seem most promising to you as tools for psychological investigations? There is room for debate about what kind of science psychology is and should be; we hope that you think about these questions as you read this book.

Wilson, T. D. (July 12, 2012). Stop Bullying the “Soft” Sciences. In The Los Angeles Times. Copyright 2012 Timothy D. Wilson and Sherrell J. Aston. Reproduced by permission.

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What are psychologists expected to do when they report the results of their research?

What exactly are psychologists on their honor to do? At least three things. First, when they write reports of their studies and publish them in scientific journals, psychologists are obligated to report truthfully on what they did and what they found. They can’t fabricate results (e.g., claiming to have performed studies that they never really performed) or fudge results (e.g., changing records of data that were actually collected), and they can’t mislead by omission (e.g., by reporting only the results that confirm their hypothesis and saying nothing about the results that don’t). Second, psychologists are obligated to share credit fairly by including as co-authors of their reports the other people who contributed to the work, and by mentioning in their reports the other scientists who have done related work. And third, psychologists are obligated to share their data. The fact that anyone can check up on anyone else is part of why the honor system works as well as it does.

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SUMMARY QUIZ [2.4]

Question 2.11

1. Informed consent…
  1. is only required when testing animals.
  2. requires that people must know everything about a study before agreeing to participate.
  3. can only be given by an adult.
  4. is usually obtained orally rather than in writing.

c.

Question 2.12

2. What is debriefing?
  1. A promise of confidentiality.
  2. The requirement to share data with other scientists.
  3. The prohibition against fabricating results.
  4. A description of the true nature and purpose of a study that is given to a participant after the study has ended.

d.

Question 2.13

3. What are psychologists ethically required to do when reporting research results?
  1. report findings truthfully
  2. share credit for research
  3. make data available for further research
  4. all of the above.

d.