Camryn Franke

Dr. Katherine Maloney

Theory of knowledge

18 November 2016

What limits should ethics place on social science research?

In recent years, the ethical limits placed on social science research have become more extensive. Today there are many rules that need to be followed when carrying out an experiment. These rules could be seen as both positive and negative. Positive because they protect the rights of living organism but yet they are also negative as they limit us from advancing our knowledge in very specific areas. For example, the effect that extreme stress can have on a living being. The knowledge gained from this example would be extremely helpful in terms of determining ways to help living beings suffering from stress, however in order to gain this knowledge living beings would have to be put through extreme stress which could be viewed as unethical and harmful. Looking at past research experiments, it is evident that there weren’t always this many rules when it came to experimentation and many of these experiments have been labeled as unethical and cruel yet they made groundbreaking discoveries that still benefit us today and from them, we can also advance this knowledge. It can be seen that some researchers felt the only way to gain new, accurate, beneficial knowledge, was to be unethical. Perhaps they felt that the number of living beings harmed would be a lot less than the number of people or animals that would benefit from the study and so overall it would be a win rather than a loss. Nowadays, our society seems to have a clear understanding of what we should not do in terms of ethics however, it cannot be ignored that in the past, ‘unethical’ research experiments made huge breakthroughs and gained us valuable information. Furthermore, one could question the limits that ethics should place on social science research especially if the findings will be beneficial to society and that by placing caps on research methods, we may not be able to advance our knowledge in the field of human beings. Personally, I feel that hurtful or harmful studies can be done only if permission is given from the test subjects and more importantly I feel that no animal should be used to replace a human and that the organism being tested on should be the organism that researchers are trying to find out about.

Claim:

Ethics should place limits on the use of living beings in research done in the social science field. Nowadays, Animals testing has skyrocketed. Many people argue that animals are not an accurate way of attaining knowledge about humans as they are very different in terms of genetics and therefore it is very unethical to use them as test subjects. Some researchers say that it is a good way as the animal they are using shares 99% of our genetic material but clearly, even that minute difference makes us completely different and therefore there is no reason for us to harm animals for no reason. One may ask what the point is in harming hundreds or even thousands of animals when the results won’t necessarily enough to help humans because they animal used I not identical to ourselves. Also, many believe that it is greatly unethical to use animals in experimentation because they are living beings too meaning that feel pain just as much as we do and can even die from stress. Most importantly, animals cannot vouch for themselves not to be tested on and so it is not right for us to decide for them. It is not ethical for us to harm animals for the sake of gaining new knowledge, but also it is not ethical to harm humans for the sake of gaining new knowledge. For example, in 1969 there was an experiment conducted on a group of monkeys to determine the effect of addiction and drug use. The group was trained to inject themselves with an assortment of drugs such as morphine and cocaine. Once they learned how to injected themselves, the monkeys were left with a large supply of each drug. Some of the monkeys were so disturbed that they broke their arms while trying to escape and others tore off their own fingers. Within two weeks all the monkeys had died from an overdose. The point of the experiment was simply to understand the effects of addiction and drug use; a point which many rational and ethical people would know did not require such horrendous treatment of animals. They simply could have taken actual drug addicts and monitored them.

Counter claim:

Ethics should not place limits on the use of living beings in research in the social science field. In order to be able to accurately understand how we are programmed and the living beings around us, sometimes it is necessary to carry out unpleasant experiments to obtain knowledge that will help many people. For example, in 1939 a research experiment was conducted on a group of orphaned children in Iowa to determine if labeling someone, could impact their speech. Twenty-two orphaned children were placed in control and experimental groups. Half received positive speech therapy, praising the fluency of their speech, while the other half received negative speech therapy, belittling them for every speech imperfection and telling them they were stutterers. The outcome: many of the normal speaking children who received negative speech therapy suffered negative psychological effects and others retained speech difficulties in their later lives. The children who were stutterers to begin with and received the negative speech therapy became progressively worse. Neither the orphanage nor the children were told the true intent of the experiment. This experiment is now known as the monster study as it was unethical. However, the lack of ethical limits was the reason why it was so successful in answering the research question and because of this study, we know the negative impacts of labeling and perhaps we might have never acquired if this experiment wasn’t done. It is important that we test on living beings

Conclusion:

Nowadays, the American Psychological Association has a Code of Conduct in place when it comes to ethics in psychological experiments. Experimenters must adhere to various rules pertaining to everything from confidentiality to consent to overall beneficence. These rules ensure that no humans are harmed at all, however, the rules regarding animal testing are not so prominent. Testing on living beings is ultimately unethical and should limit research in the social sciences however I feel that it is important to test on living beings in order to obtain valuable and helpful knowledge as long as animals aren’t being supplemented for humans.

 Works cited:

"Top 10 Unethical Psychological Experiments - Listverse". Listverse. N. p., 2008. Web. 16 Mar. 2017