Question

Are there any circumstances where you, as a criminal justice researcher, would feel justified in violating ethical research standards in the pursuit of research findings? Would this answer change if you were a medical researcher looking for a cure for a disease, such as AIDS or cancer? If there are no circumstances where you would be willing to violate ethics in the pursuit of research, why do you feel that way?

Answer 1

Ethical standards are guidelines that would help a researcher conduct the research following the guidelines in a systematic way. Violating the ethical standards at times would land the researcher into legal actions. However, Utilitarian ethics suggests that an act would be considered ethical if it maximizes benefit to maximum number of people and reduce any harm but rule Utilitarian suggests that such actions should be within the set rules of its operation. So, it would be unethical to violate the set rules by the job and a researcher shouldn’t use deception or cheating to gain any research results. This wouldn’t change even if I’m a medical researcher because at times it would land the research subjects into great trouble.

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