7.10 Minimal risk? You are a member of your college’s institutional review board. You must decide whether several research proposals qualify for less rigorous review because they involve only minimal risk to subjects. Federal regulations say that “minimal risk” means the risks are no greater than “those ordinarily encountered in daily life or during the performance of routine physical or psychological examinations or tests.” That’s vague. Which of these do you think qualifies as “minimal risk”? Explain your reasoning.

7.11 Who serves on the review board? Government regulations require that institutional review boards consist of at least five people, including at least one scientist, one nonscientist, and one person from outside the institution. Most boards are larger, but many contain just one outsider.

7.12 Institutional review boards. If your college or university has an institutional review board that screens all studies that use human subjects, get a copy of the document that describes this board (you can probably find it online). At larger institutions, you may find multiple institutional review boards—for example, separate boards for medical studies and for studies in the social sciences.

7.13 Informed consent. A researcher suspects that people who are abused as children tend to be more prone to severe depression as young adults. She prepares a questionnaire that measures depression and that also asks many personal questions about childhood experiences. Write a description of the purpose of this research to be read by subjects in order to obtain their informed consent. You must balance the conflicting goals of not deceiving the subjects as to what the questionnaire will tell about them and of not biasing the sample by scaring off people with painful childhood experiences.

7.14 Is consent needed? In which of the following circumstances would you allow collecting personal information without the subjects’ consent? Why?

7.15 Coercion? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulations for informed consent state that “An investigator shall seek such consent only under circumstances that provide the prospective subject or the representative sufficient opportunity to consider whether or not to participate and that minimize the possibility of coercion or undue influence.” Coercion occurs when an overt or implicit threat of harm is intentionally presented by one person to another in order to obtain compliance. Which of the following circumstances do you believe constitutes coercion? Discuss.

7.16 Undue influence? Undue influence in obtaining informed consent often occurs through an offer of an excessive or inappropriate reward or other overture in order to obtain compliance. Which of the following circumstances do you believe constitutes undue influence? Discuss.

7.17 Students as subjects. Students taking Psychology 001 are required to serve as experimental subjects. Students in Psychology 002 are not required to serve, but they are given extra credit if they do so. Students in Psychology 003 are required either to sign up as subjects or to write a term paper. Serving as an experimental subject may be educational, but current ethical standards frown on using “dependent subjects” such as prisoners or charity medical patients. Students are certainly somewhat dependent on their teachers. Do you object to any of these course policies? If so, which ones, and why?

7.18 How common is HIV infection? Researchers from Yale University, working with medical teams in Tanzania, wanted to know how common infection with the AIDS virus is among pregnant women in that African country. To do this, they planned to test blood samples drawn from pregnant women.

Yale’s institutional review board insisted that the researchers get the informed consent of each woman and tell her the results of the test. This is the usual procedure in developed nations. The Tanzanian government did not want to tell the women why blood was drawn or tell them the test results. The government feared panic if many people turned out to have an incurable disease for which the country’s medical system could not provide care. The study was canceled. Do you think that Yale was right to apply its usual standards for protecting subjects? Explain your answer.

7.19 Anonymous or confidential? One of the most important nongovernment surveys in the United States is the General Social Survey (see Example 7 in Chapter 1). The GSS regularly monitors public opinion on a wide variety of political and social issues. Interviews are conducted in person in the subject’s home. Are a subject’s responses to GSS questions anonymous, confidential, or both? Explain your answer. You may wish to visit the GSS website at gss.norc.org.

7.20 Anonymous or confidential? The website for STDHELP.org contains the following information about one method offered for HIV testing: “The clinic will require you to provide some information that allows them to deliver your results. Typically a random numeric code is used for identification, and your name or social security number are never used in the process. There are no written results that are documented . . .” Does this practice offer anonymity or just confidentiality?

7.21 Anonymous or confidential? A website is looking for volunteers for a research study involving methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterial infection that is highly resistant to some antibiotics. The website contains the following information about the study: “The Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics is looking for individuals who have or have had MRSA to fill out an anonymous survey and provide suggestions on how to improve treatment. The survey will help us to find out more about the concerns of people affected by MRSA . . .” Following the announcement is a web link that takes you to the questionnaire. Does this study really provide anonymity or just confidentiality? Explain your answer.

7.22 Sunshine laws. All states in the United States have open records laws, sometimes known as “Sunshine Laws,” that give citizens access to government meetings and records. This includes, for example, reports of crimes and recordings of 911 calls. Crime reports will include the names of anyone accused of the crime. Suppose a 10-year-old juvenile is accused of committing a crime. A reporter from the local newspaper asks for a copy of the crime report. The sheriff refuses to provide the report because the accused is a juvenile and he believes the name of the accused should be confidential. Is this an issue of confidentiality? Discuss.

7.23 https. Generally, secure websites use encryption and authentication standards to protect the confidentiality of web transactions. The most commonly used protocol for web security has been TLS, or Transport Layer Security. This technology is still commonly referred to as SSL. Websites with addresses beginning with https use this protocol. Do you believe that https websites provide true confidentially? Do you think it is possible to guarantee the confidentiality of data on any website? Discuss.

7.24 Not really anonymous. Some common practices may appear to offer anonymity while actually delivering only confidentiality. Market researchers often use mail surveys that do not ask the respondent’s identity but contain hidden codes on the questionnaire that identify the respondent. A false claim of anonymity is clearly unethical. If only confidentiality is promised, is it also unethical to say nothing about the identifying code, perhaps causing respondents to believe their replies are anonymous?

7.25 Human biological materials. Long ago, doctors drew a blood specimen from you as part of treating minor anemia. Unknown to you, the sample was stored. Now researchers plan to use stored samples from you and many other people to look for genetic factors that may influence anemia. It is no longer possible to ask your consent because you are no longer alive. Modern technology can read your entire genetic makeup from the blood sample.

7.26 Equal treatment. Researchers on depression proposed to investigate the effect of supplemental therapy and counseling on the quality of life of adults with depression. Eligible patients on the rolls of a large medical clinic were to be randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The treatment group would be offered dental care, vision testing, transportation, and other services not available without charge to the control group. The review board felt that providing these services to some but not other persons in the same institution raised ethical questions. Do you agree? Explain your answer.

7.27 Sham surgery? Clinical trials like the Parkinson’s disease study mentioned in Example 6 are becoming more common. One medical researcher says, “This is just the beginning. Tomorrow, if you have a new procedure, you will have to do a double-blind placebo trial.” Example 6 outlines the arguments for and against testing surgery just as drugs are tested. When would you allow sham surgery in a clinical trial of a new surgery?

7.28 The Willowbrook hepatitis studies. In the 1960s, children entering the Willowbrook State School, an institution for the mentally retarded, were deliberately infected with hepatitis. The researchers argued that almost all children in the institution quickly became infected anyway. The studies showed for the first time that two strains of hepatitis existed. This finding contributed to the development of effective vaccines. Despite these valuable results, the Willowbrook studies are now considered an example of unethical research. Explain why, according to current ethical standards, useful results are not enough to allow a study.

7.29 AIDS clinical trials. Now that effective treatments for AIDS are at last available, is it ethical to test treatments that may be less effective? Combinations of several powerful drugs reduce the level of HIV in the blood and at least delay illness and death from AIDS. But effectiveness depends on how damaged the patient’s immune system is and what drugs he or she has previously taken. There are strong side effects, and patients must be able to take more than a dozen pills on time every day. Because AIDS is often fatal and the combination therapy works, we might argue that it isn’t ethical to test any new treatment for AIDS that might possibly be less effective. But that might prevent discovery of better treatments. This is a strong example of the conflict between doing the best we know for patients now and finding better treatments for other patients in the future. How can we ethically test new drugs for AIDS?

7.30 AIDS trials in Africa. Effective drugs for treating AIDS are very expensive, so most African nations cannot afford to give them to large numbers of people. Yet AIDS is more common in parts of Africa than anywhere else. A few clinical trials are looking at ways to prevent pregnant mothers infected with HIV from passing the infection to their unborn children, a major source of HIV infections in Africa. Some people say these trials are unethical because they do not give effective AIDS drugs to their subjects, as would be required in rich nations. Others reply that the trials are looking for treatments that can work in the real world in Africa and that they promise benefits at least to the children of their subjects. What do you think?

7.31 AIDS trials in Africa. One of the most important goals of AIDS research is to find a vaccine that will protect against HIV. Because AIDS is so common in parts of Africa, that is the easiest place to test a vaccine. It is likely, however, that a vaccine would be so expensive that it could not (at least at first) be widely used in Africa. Is it ethical to test in Africa if the benefits go mainly to rich countries? The treatment group of subjects would get the vaccine, and the placebo group would later be given the vaccine if it proved effective. So the actual subjects would benefit—it is the future benefits that would go elsewhere. What do you think? Explain your answer.

7.32 Opinion polls. The congressional campaigns are in full swing, and the candidates have hired polling organizations to take regular polls to find out what the voters think about the issues. What information should the pollsters be required to give out?

7.33 A right to know? Some people think that the law should require that all political poll results be made public. Otherwise, the possessors of poll results can use the information to their own advantage. They can act on the information, release only selected parts of it, or time the release for best effect. A candidate’s organization replies that they are paying for the poll in order to gain information for their own use, not to amuse the public. Do you favor requiring complete disclosure of political poll results? What about other private surveys, such as market research surveys of consumer tastes?

7.34 Telling the government. The 2010 census was a short-form-only census. The decennial long form was eliminated. The American Community Survey (ACS) replaced the long form in 2010 and will collect long-form-type information throughout the decade rather than only once every 10 years. The 2010 ACS asked detailed questions, for example:

Does this house, apartment, or mobile home have a) hot and cold piped water?; b) a flush toilet?; c) a bathtub or shower?; d) a sink or faucet?; e) a stove or range?; f) a refrigerator?; and g) telephone service from which you can both make and receive calls? Include cell phones.

The form also asked for individual income in dollars, broken down by source, and whether any “physical, mental, or emotional condition” caused the respondent difficulty in “concentrating, remembering, or making decisions.”

Give brief arguments for and against the use of the ACS form: the government has legitimate uses for such information, but the questions seem to invade people’s privacy.

7.35 Charging for data? Data produced by the government are often available free or at low cost to private users. For example, satellite weather data produced by the U.S. National Weather Service are available free to TV stations for their weather reports and to anyone on the Web. Opinion 1: Government data should be available to everyone at minimal cost. European governments, on the other hand, charge TV stations for weather data. Opinion 2: The satellites are expensive, and the TV stations are making a profit from their weather services, so they should share the cost. Which opinion do you support, and why?

7.36 Surveys of youth. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a survey of teenagers, asked the subjects if they had ever had sexual intercourse. Males who said Yes were then asked, “That very first time that you had sexual intercourse with a female, how old were you?” and “Please tell me the name or initials of your first sexual partner so that I can refer to her during the interview.” Should consent of parents be required to ask minors about sex, drugs, and other such issues, or is consent of the minors themselves enough? Give reasons for your opinion.

7.37 Deceiving subjects. Students sign up to be subjects in a psychology experiment. When they arrive, they are placed in a room and assigned a task. During the task, the subject hears a loud thud from an adjacent room and then a piercing cry for help. Some subjects are placed in a room by themselves. Others are placed in a room with “confederates” who have been instructed by the researcher to look up upon hearing the cry, then return to their task. The treatments being compared are whether the subject is alone in the room or in the room with confederates. Will the subject ignore the cry for help?

The students had agreed to take part in an unspecified study, and the true nature of the experiment is explained to them afterward. Do you think this study is ethically okay?

7.38 Tempting subjects. A psychologist conducts the following experiment: he measures the attitude of subjects toward cheating, then has them take a mathematics skills exam in which the subjects are tempted to cheat. Subjects are told that high scores will receive a $100.00 gift certificate and that the purpose of the experiment is to see if rewards affect performance. The exam is computer-based and multiple choice. Subjects are left alone in a room with a computer on which the exam is available and are told that they are to click on the answer they believe is correct. However, when subjects click on an answer, a small pop-up window appears with the correct answer indicated. When the pop-up window is closed, it is possible to change the answer selected. The computer records—unknown to the subjects—whether or not they change their answers after closing the pop-up window. After completing the exam, attitude toward cheating is retested.

Subjects who cheat tend to change their attitudes to find cheating more acceptable. Those who resist the temptation to cheat tend to condemn cheating more strongly on the second test of attitude. These results confirm the psychologist’s theory.

This experiment tempts subjects to cheat. The subjects are led to believe that they can cheat secretly when, in fact, they are observed. Is this experiment ethically objectionable? Explain your position.