Research tips: Ethical issues
Consider the ethical implications of your research, findings and what you choose to use, urges Tarja Moles
Research ethics are often discussed in relation to medical research, but there are actually numerous ethical issues to consider when you start doing almost any kind of research. Here are some of the most common ones you might want to think about:
Fabrication of research results
The fundamental value underlying academic research is trust: researchers trust that other researchers do sound research, and the general public, in turn, expects to be able to trust researchers’ findings. Therefore, honesty and integrity should be at the very heart of what you do when you decide to embark on a research project: you want to find out the truth and you want to report this truth to others accurately and without bias.
Although fabricating research results to suit one’s own purposes is far from unheard of (just think of those less-than-truthful stories commonly found in tabloids), you should always seek to present the genuine results you find – not the ones you would like to have found.