Unethical Research

In order to understand what unethical research is, we have to define what it means to be unethical. To social communities unethical behavior is doing something that is wrong. What if it was a company or government agency doing unethical research? Can you really distinguish between right and wrong? There are times in order for a study to be accurate, that some unethical procedures must be applied. It’s like a pharmaceutical company testing out a drug and giving half of its participants the real drug and the other a placebo. The half that gets the placebo does not know they are receiving it but yet some may experience symptoms. It is easy for them to rule those out. What if a company or government agency lies about the research and service they are providing? This is what unethical research is all about. The knowing factor of deliberately miscommunicating a research project or falsely presenting it to those who are participating in it and never telling them what was done. There were many instances where human research was very unethical. We hear about those that happen overseas, but what about the ones that actually happen here in the United States? Unethical behavior has happened and whether it is human research or a business trying to falsify data in order for their company to advance is still the same. One may impact us emotionally, but the other affects economy and how our businesses run.

One may also define ethics as a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analyzing complex problems and issues. (Resnick, 2011) Keeping this in mind, we can begin to ask ourselves what types of unethical behavior do companies and or government agencies get involved in when it comes to research. Unethical research has been around for many ages. Due to it increasing knowledge steps were brought about to curtail or stop this type of research. The history of research ethics begins with the tragic history of research abuse by Nazi doctors during World War II. A total of sixteen German physicians practiced unethical medical experiments on Jews, gypsies, and political prisoners. In 1947, out of this horror, came the Nuremberg Code and other international codes of ethics written to protect research participants. Under this code, the physicians were convicted for crimes against humanity. This also led to standards in research requiring that subjects participate voluntarily and are informed of the risks of the research. (Marsden,Melander, na) But what of unethical research done in businesses that truly can’t really be seen and the affect it may have on one person? Unethical business research is used in order for a company to present itself in a way that they are not or to get ahead of their competition by unethical means.

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