Ethical considerations

Opening cases

Charles Dawsom

Charles Dawson was a paleontologist who in the late 19th century ade a number of seemingly important fossil discoveries, which he named after himself (e.g., plagiaulax dawsoni, iguanodon dawsoni, and salaginella dawsoni)

He became considerably famous, was elected a fellow of the British Geological Society and appointed to the Society of Antiquaries of London.

His most famous discovery (in 1912) was the PiltdownMan–a fossil from a new species that represented the missing link between man and ape.

In the 1950s researchers realized the piltdown man fossil did not represent the missing link, but rather an elaborate fraud in which the skull of a medieval human was combined with the jawbone of an orangutan and the teeth of a fossilized chimpanzee.

The bones were chemically treated to make them look older, and the teeth had even been hand filed to make them fit with the skull.

In the wake of this revelation, at least 38 of Dawson’s finds have been found to be fakes, created in his pursuit of fame and recognition.

Today

In 2001, German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön appeared to produce a series of breakthrough discoveries in the area of electronics and nanotechnology¹ and was awarded with a number of outstanding research awards (e.g., “breakthroughs of the year” by Science).

However, other scientists could not replicate his work, others noticed that an identical graph of data appeared in several different of his papers, Schön claimed not to have logs or notebooks and that he “had to erase all data”

Consequence: His papers were retracted, his doctoral degree from the Uni Konstanz was revoked, he was fired, and was banned from working in science for eight years.

Other examples: Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and other politicans

Exercise

Read an extract of Recker (2021) about potential ethical conflict’s he has observed. Briefly explain the ethical conflicts described here and discuss if they involve strong ethical misconduct, some ethical misconduct or none at all.

Ethical issues

Scientific ethics

Scientific ethics describe norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior in scientific work² and reflect the chief concerns and goals of science (Resnik and Dinse 2012). Main principles³ stipulate “honesty and integrity” in all stages of scientific conduct (Recker 2021).

Many professions and communities have formalized ethical codes to guide professionals in their field

• The Hippocratic Oath: doctors should „do no harm“ to their patients.
• Professional engineers code of ethics: „hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.”
• First law of robotics: “A robot may not injure a human being.”

Here, we focus on one subset of ethical issues in scientific conduct—the reporting of research.

Following Recker (2021), we discuss four ethical considerations that relate to scientific writing: plagiarism, recognition of co-author contributions, honest reporting, and the appropriate use of language.

Exercise

What are further examples of unacceptable behavior in academic writing?

Responsibility

All behaviors involved in the research process, such as developing a theory, collecting data, and testing hypotheses, are subject to ethical considerations, codified and uncodified, particularly ethics related to empirical data collection and human subjects (Recker 2021).

• Research involving human subjects in institutions that receive federal research funding must receive ethical clearance by an independent review board (IRB).
• IRB must approve any research with human subjects before it is initiated.

An IRB evaluates

• the extent to which participation in a study
  • is voluntary,
  • does not exert physical or psychological stress, and
  • not cause other kinds of damage to participants
• whether participants must give consent regarding
  • how their data will be used
  • how their data will be reported
  • how the data will be protected in terms of anonymity or confidentiality
• whether participants have the right to withdraw from participation at any time.
• how data is stored and analysed
  • Involves ownership, storage and backup, privacy, confidentiality, access, and reuse.

Example: Facebook secret moods experiment and emotional contagion

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication of another author’s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions and their representation as one’s own work (Recker 2021, 206)—the misattribution of credit.

Intentional plagiarism

An author knowingly lifts text directly from other authors’ work without giving appropriate credit.

Self-plagiarism

An author copies large parts of an earlier manuscript into a new manuscript.

Duplicate publication

An author submits for publication a previously published work as if it were original.

Regardless of the form plagiarism takes, you are unlikely to get away with it and can destroy your reputation and career.

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Guidelines

The simple rule is this: do not plagiarise in any form. Instead, do the following (Recker 2021, 207):

1. Always acknowledge the sources of and contributions to your ideas.
2. Enclose in quotation marks any passage of text that is directly taken from another author’s work and acknowledge that author in an in-text citation.
3. Acknowledge every source you use in writing, whether you paraphrase it, summarize it, or quote it directly.
4. When paraphrasing or summarizing other authors’ work, reproduce the meaning of the original author’s ideas or facts as closely as possible using your own words and sentence composition.
5. Do not copy sections of your previously published work into a new manuscript without citing the publication and using quotation marks.

Recognition of contributions

The appropriate recognition of co-author contributions concerns appropriately acknowledging collaborators’ substantial contributions to a scholarly work (Recker 2021, 207). Four our kinds of ethical issues are of concern:

Coercion authorship

An author uses intimidation to gain authorship credit.

Gift authorship

Individuals are named as co-authors without making a significant contribution.

Mutual support authorship

Authors agree to place each other’s names on their papers to signal productivity.

Ghost authorship

Papers are written by people who are not included as authors.

Co-authorship

Co-authored papers are the rule in academia, not the exception, as collaboration is a key element of scientific work (Recker 2021, 172).

Collaboration may mean working with your supervisor or other researchers on topics of mutual interest to leverage individual strengths and create synergies.

A successful collaboration depends on with whom you work.

• Work with people who are good—ideally, better then you—in a particular area
• Look for complementarity of skills and alignment in working styles

Co-authors should have made substantial contributions to the design of the research and/or to the manuscript. They need to give final approval of the version to be published and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work (Recker 2021, 173).

Honest reporting

Research publications need to comply with expectations for transparency, openness, and reproducibility, reflected by eight standards for honest reporting Nosek et al. (2015):

Citation standard

All data, program code, and other methods need to be appropriately cited using persistent identifiers, except for truly special situations,.

Data standard

It must be possible to make the research data used in a paper available to other researchers for the purpose of reproducing or extending the paper’s analysis.

Analytic methods transparency

The methods/code/scripts used in data analysis should be made available to other researchers for the purpose of reproducing the paper’s analysis.

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Research materials transparency

Materials used in an analysis should be made available to other researchers for the purpose of directly replicating the procedure where needed.

Design and analysis transparency

Authors need to adhere to reporting standards in their field regarding how key aspects of the research design and analysis should be carried out and reported.

Pre-registration of studies

Where possible, a research design, including materials, measurements, and hypotheses, should pre-registered and made available prior to data collection.

Pre-registration of analysis plans

Where possible, analysis plans should be pre-registered and made available prior to the analysis of data.

Replication standard

Academic journals should hold replication studies to the same standards as other content submitted to the journal.

Appropriate use of language

Appropriate use of language refers to the wording of reports so they are not biased in terms of gender, race, orientation, culture, or any other characteristics (Recker 2021, 209).

Among others, the appropriate use of language also involves using gender-responsible, ethnicity-responsible, and inclusive language.

Details on language and vocabulary will be covered in a separate unit (Prof. Zenk).

Summary

Conclusion

You should stick to six fundamental ethical principles for scientific research (Recker 2021):

Scientific honesty

Scientists should not commit scientific fraud by, for example, fabricating, “fudging,” trimming, “cooking,” destroying, or misrepresenting data.

Carefulness

Scientists should avoid careless errors and sloppiness in all aspects of scientific work.

Intellectual freedom

Scientists should be free to pursue new ideas and criticize old ones and conduct research on anything they find interesting.

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Openness

Whenever possible, scientists should share data, results, methods, theories, equipment, and so on; allow people to see their work; and be open to criticism.

Attribution of credit

Scientists should not plagiarise the work of other scientists. They should give credit where credit is due but not where it is not due.

Public responsibility

Scientists should report research in the public media when the research has an important and direct bearing on human happiness and when the research has been sufficiently validated by scientific peers.

Further reading

Three key resources can give you more information about ethics in information systems research (Recker 2021, 211):

• The set of explanations of scientific ethics and standards for ethical conduct of science in general (see e.g., Resnik and Dinse 2012)
• The set of ethical standards set by the Association for Information Systems (AIS), containing code items that must alsways be adhered and codes that are “recommended ethical behavior” (AIS Code of Research Conduct)
• Studies and papers on ethics in IS research and related fields (see e.g., Allen, Ball, and Smith 2011; Clarke 2006; Gray 2009)

Q&A

Literature

Allen, Gove N, Nicholas L Ball, and H Jeff Smith. 2011. “Information Systems Research Behaviors: What Are the Normative Standards?” Mis Quarterly, 533–51.

Clarke, Roger. 2006. “Plagiarism by Academics: More Complex Than It Seems.” Journal of the Association for Information Systems 7 (1): 5.

Gray, Paul. 2009. “Journal Self-Citation i: Overview of the Journal Self-Citation Papers–the Wisdom of the IS Crowd.” Communications of the Association for Information Systems 25 (1): 1.

McNutt, Marcia. 2016. “Taking up TOP.” Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Nosek, Brian A, George Alter, George C Banks, Denny Borsboom, Sara D Bowman, Steven J Breckler, Stuart Buck, et al. 2015. “Promoting an Open Research Culture.” Science 348 (6242): 1422–25.

Recker, Jan. 2021. Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner’s Guide. Springer Nature.

Resnik, David B, and Gregg E Dinse. 2012. “Do US Research Institutions Meet or Exceed Federal Requirements for Instruction in Responsible Conduct of Research? A National Survey.” Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges 87 (9): 1237.

Footnotes

1. Schön and two co-authors claimed to have produced a molecular-scale alternative to transistors used commonly in consumer devices.

2. Acceptable versus unacceptable behavior can sometimes be hard to distinguish and ethical principles can be in conflict with one another.

3. In general, ethical behavior describes a set of actions that abide by certain rules of: Responsibility (accepting the potential costs, duties, and obligations of one’s decisions); Accountability (being answerable to others for decisions made and actions taken); Liability (accepting responsibility and accountability so individuals can recover damages done to them through breaches of responsibility); Due diligence (investigating or exercising care to ensure individuals can examine or appeal how responsibility, accountability, and liability are applied)