1. Here is a chart that was presented at a talk given at CMU a few
years ago by
researcher Simon LeVay, where F refers to women, M refers to men, HM refers
to homosexual men, and the xs refer to levels of a particular brain
structure:
x x
x x
x
x
x
x x
x
x
_________________________________
F M
HM
Are there potential ethical implications of presenting data in this
way? Why or why not?
2. Most ethicists and researchers have condemned the use
of any "research" findings that came out of the Nazi concentration camps,
such as data on human tolerance for freezing (for which the Nazi data is the
most comprehensive we have on this topic). What are the issues
involved in using vs. not using this data? Would these issues extend
to other types of studies that might not be ethically permissible now,
such as Milgram’s obedience work?
Now for the usual dilemmas:
What might you do in these situations? What are the pros and cons to
the various options, and what do you see as being the best approach to take? Are there any negative
consequences to your chosen actions? What might you do to minimize and/or
counteract those? Is there any way you could
have prevented these situations from arising in the first place?
3. You are a clinician in a research clinic conducting a treatment outcome study for generalized anxiety disorder. Clients participating in the study are randomly assigned to either a relaxation training program, a cognitive therapy program, or a cognitive therapy plus exposure program. Your new client was assigned to the cognitive therapy program, but his major complaint is muscle tension, which is so severe that he misses work due to his muscle aches, and you feel he would be much more likely to benefit from the relaxation training program.
3a. Same as above, but you have now seen this client for
several sessions, and he shows no improvement yet. He asks you if you
think he should continue in this treatment program or should drop out so that he
can seek treatment that might be more effective.
4. Again, you are a clinician in a research clinic conducting
a treatment outcome study for generalized anxiety disorder. Clients
participating in the study are randomly assigned to either a relaxation
training program, a cognitive therapy program, or a
cognitive therapy plus exposure program. Your client has severe
generalized anxiety that is greatly interfering in his life. He was
assigned to the relaxation training program, which was designed primarily as a
control condition to equate for therapist attention and expectancies.
Neither you nor your colleagues expect this condition to be as effective as the
two "active treatment" conditions, and you are uncomfortable treating someone
with such debilitating anxiety in this condition.
4a. Same as above, but in the first treatment session, your client asks you if you really believe that relaxation training can help him with his anxiety.
5. You are conducting a study using your university's subject pool. Although you are not currently teaching classes in the department, you have done so before, and may do so again next semester. During one data collection section, you find that a number of your former students have signed up for the study; they greet you happily and said they signed up because they liked you so much as a teacher and wanted to help you with your research.
5a. Same as above, but your study consists of a number of questionnaires that ask about very sensitive areas, such as details of participants' sexual histories, trauma histories, and psych histories.
5b. Same as above, but your former students have also told you
that they are planning to enroll in the class you are scheduled to teach
the following semester.
6. You are conducting a study in which you must deceive your subjects as to the study's true purpose. You are reviewing the consent form with one of your subjects, and when she gets to the part about being able to ask any questions before beginning, she says, "So, what's the catch here? What's the study really about?"
7. "Deborah, a third-year graduate student, and Kathleen, a post-doc,
have made a series of measurements on a new
experimental semiconductor material using an expensive neutron source
at a national laboratory. When they get back to their own laboratory and
examine the data, they get the following data points. A newly proposed
theory predicts results indicated by the curve.
During the measurements at the national laboratory, Deborah and Kathleen observed that there were power fluctuations they could not control or predict. Furthermore, they discussed their work with another group doing similar experiments, and they knew that the other group had gotten results confirming the theoretical prediction and was writing a manuscript describing their results.
In writing up their own results for publication, Kathleen suggests dropping the two anomalous data points near the abscissa (the solid squares) from the published graph (omitted here…) and from a statistical analysis.
She proposes that the existence of the data points be mentioned in the
paper as possibly due to power fluctuations and being outside the expected
standard deviation calculated from the remaining data points. "These
two runs," she argues to Deborah, "were obviously wrong.""
[Case Study Taken from: Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public
Policy - NAS NAE IOM. On Being a Scientist, 2nd Ed. (National Academy Press,
1995). - available at http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/obas/contents/experimental.html#Selection
along with other related scenarios]
8. Now imagine a similar scenario in a different field, i.e.,
ours. You are examining BDI scores in a large study, and have discovered
several outliers that are skewing the results. Upon examining the
questionnaires themselves, you find that the respondents have answered
in ways that appear to be erratic, not matching your knowledge of these
cases. You conclude that they must have either misunderstood the
questionnaires, answered randomly, or just misbubbled their scantron sheets,
and so you drop those cases as incorrectly completed outliers, noting your
dropping of the cases and your reason for doing so in a footnote.