Ch 4- Ethics in Research

       No that long ago, researchers conducted their studies and experiments disregarding important issues related to the welfare of participants. In the name of Science advance, several barbarities were committed against humans and nonhumans. Cases like what happened at Willowbrook School for mentally "retarded" children (between 1956-1971), when almost 100% of the residents were deliberately exposed to hepatitis for the purpose of testing experimental vaccines, are enough to illustrate how participant's integrity should be regarded in the research process.

  

      The ethics involved in a research process are fundamental to ensure the protection of participants, accuracy, and honesty in the reporting of its findings as well. Research ethics were elaborated to regulate the standards of conduct for scientific researchers. It is important that researchers be aligned with ethical principles in order to protect the dignity, rights, and welfare of research participants. All research involving participants and subjects should be reviewed by an ethics committee to ensure that the appropriate ethical standards are being upheld. Committees as the IRB, which are responsible to protect the rights of humans and the IACUC for nonhumans, have a fundamental role to make researchers meet their ethical responsibilities in their studies.

      Since 1974 the National Research Act was created to regulate the protection of human beings in research. In the 60's, the APA started to idealize a formal code of ethics to guide psychological research through standards of professional conduct for these professionals to use. The APA used to be updated to attend to the demands that change according to the time that passes by.  In this way, the APA works as a guideline available to the Psychologists to develop their behavior studies keeping high-quality standards in their research.