Question

Respond to the following short answer prompt: Imagine you are a lead social science researcher and are responsible for approving students’ proposed research studies. Review the three sample proposals below and provide brief feedback to summarize any ethical concerns you have related to each of the proposals, based on what you know about ethical codes and expectations in the social sciences.1. Proposal 1: Racial Predisposition – The aim of this study is to examine the direct link between biological race and violent criminal activity. In this study, I plan to prove the direct and positive correlation between biological race and incidence of committing violent crimes. This will then prove that race is the strongest indicator of tendency toward violent crimes. 2. Proposal 2: Electroshock Therapy – In this study, I will examine the effect of electroshock therapy on undesirable behavior in human subjects. This study will administer electrical shocks to human subjects as a disciplinary measure when undesirable behavior is observed. The goal of the study is to determine whether the electroshock therapy is a suitable treatment for resolving disciplinary issues in preteens and adolescents. If this therapy is found to be effective, it will be prescribed to resolve disciplinary issues in preteens and adolescents.3. Proposal 3: Health Problems, Diet, and Socioeconomic Status – This study aims to examine the relationship between health problems (diabetes, heart disease, and obesity), diet, and socioeconomic status. It is proposed that people of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to encounter these problems. Research will be conducted on human subjects where data are collected on diet (the types of food consumed along with money spent on food), and this will be related to the overall health of individuals in the study. The results and findings of this research will be published publicly so others can see the risks of consuming cheap, low-quality food.

Answer 1

Answer:

Answer is given in the explanation

Explanation:

1. Racial predisposition; this research violates very basic ethical code of racial discrimination. There is no way that a researcher can be allowed to target a specific group of people based on their biological race.  This type of discrimination hinders the authenticity of research  and have far reaching repercussions for the target group as well as the whole society.

2. Electroshock therapy; this research’s target population is preteens and adolescents, experimenting such an extreme punishment on them has no justification. This causes direct harm to the children. Besides the electroshock are used on chronic psychic patients not on general public not even adults let alone the preteens.  

3. Health Problems, Diet, and Socioeconomic Status; this research proposal is better than the previous two proposals but it has some ethical regarding the consequences of the publicly published findings. Rather it would be more effective to keep these findings to the policy makers and work for the betterment of the lower status peoples so that they can also eat healthy diet.