Ethics are the correct code of practice that researchers need to adhere to when testing human participants and carrying out research. The British Psychological Society (BPS) has issued different codes of ethics, which Psychologists need to stick to when they are conducting research. The very basic ones are; informed consent, deception, protection from harm, debrief, withdrawal from the experiment and participant confidentiality. If you want to know more in detail about these ethics go to this website
The American Psychological Association (APA) also have guidelines, which Psychologists need to adhere too.
http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx
Stanley Milgram (1963) carried out one of the most famous studies in to obedience of all time; he wanted to discover the justification in to why people carried out the horrible acts during World War 2 and the Nuremburg war criminals. The experiment he carried out was only open to male participants, where they would be put in to a pairs and ‘flipped a coin’ to see which one would be the learner and which would be the teacher. The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates. The teachers were required to ask questions and if the learner got the question wrong the participant was required to give an electric shock, which gradually the voltage got higher. They found that 65% of participants carried on to the highest level of shocks.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
Today Milgram’s experiment would not be allowed as it violates most of the ethical principles, such as deception and protection from harm. However in Milgram’s day there were not so many rules when it came to psychological experimentation. Some people would argue that without such experiments like Milgram’s we would not know as much about these subjects as we do today. So in a sense with the new ethical guidelines it may hinder the chances of future research.
However some people would argue that obtaining research in an ethical way is the safest way to collect data. Even though this might not give us the same results as we may find if we did not adhere to the ethical principles they may still show similar results due to careful manipulation of the experiment.
Overall I believe that even though the new ethical guidelines may hinder some research, I believe that it is necessary for the safety of the participants and experimenters and everyone else involved that the ethical consideration should be met and to get some results that you want isn’t worth risking the safety of a participant.
Standard Error of Skewness 
To add to your discussion about Milgrams experiment, I would argue that the only ethical guideline Milgram had breached would have been that he could not have obtained informed consent, as he had deceived his participants into believing that they were actually causing someone to receive an electric shock. Is that really such a bad thing?
I have participated in a Sona study and have been deceived, not about the task I had to do or what they were measuring, it was that they were also seeing if, as a non-smoker, I would respond differently to someone who smoked regularly.
Did I feel deceived? Upset? I can honestly say…No. In fact it made the experiment all the more interesting, and I actually read the debrief! If however I had known what they were measuring this might have affected the results.
I’m not saying that all of the ethics guidelines should be breeched, merely that in most cases a degree of deception is necessary.
i have to say that your blog sparked some interest for me- and got me thinking about this quite a bit. I would have to say that I believe that ethics does hinder research as it can stop us from finding important things out- however in the interest of protection of participants it is something that has to be upheld as we do claim to live in civilised society and without ethics we would decline into corruption. Milgram’s study, though highly unethical, showed us alot about what we are all capable of- and I think it would be so interesting to see if this is still the case today.
Many argue that the participants of Milgram’s study knew that they were not actually harming the other participants and that’s why they continued with the shocks however Sheridan and King conducted a similar experiment where participants actually had to give; i believe it was a puppy, electirical shocks and they found there to be a high level of participants still delivering shocks even when they could see the animal in pain.
I really liked the way you described the basic ethical principles and also gave a brief explanation of the BPS and APA guidelines, you could have maybe explained more clearly that these are just guidelines and are not laws which have to be followed.
A further aspect of your blog which I enjoyed was the way that you used Milgram’s experiment to really ensure that the reader is clear on how ethical principles can affect a study. You could perhaps have included an example of a piece of research which does follow ethical guidelines in a better way, such as Asch’s conformity study, in which participants did not come to any harm.
Finally, I agree that it depends on a piece of research as to whether ethical principles should be breached slightly, and I think it depends whether the ends justify the means.
Hi there! To start with you could have briefly described the 5 ethical principles. 1) Beneficence and non-maleficence, individuals should receive direct benefits not harm and when conflicts occur, individual costs should outweigh societal benefits. So the welfare of the participants should come before the need to find something with the research. 2) Fidelity and Responsibility, there is trust given to the researcher in which we believe they will be knowledgeable, responsible and keep their data confidential. 3) Integrity, This is where researchers need to be honest, objective and reliable and only use deception if demonstrably necessary. 4) Justice, everyone has the right to access and benefit from research, you must be careful and not produce biases in who can benefit from the research. (This happened in the past, in medical research with drugs such as testing anti-depressants was tested on men so the benefits for women weren’t test and it was assumed would work the same). 5) Respect for others, both the researcher and the participant should understand the risks and benefits of the study. Participants have the right to privacy and their information should be kept confidential. You could argue that these strict principles hinder potential research findings as how can for example a researcher be fully objective when he/she has chosen the area of research. Or how can studies such as those researching about obedience not use deception?
You have stated that Milgram’s study today would not be able to be conducted due to ethical constraints. However at the time Milgram followed ethical procedures and his study would still be seen as ethical now. He asked over 140 physicians whether it was ethical to carry out the study (he had asked a peer reviewing panel before conducting the research). He gained consent and allowed his participants to withdraw, the only issue was he used deception but most researchers have to use deception to avoid demand characteristics or social desirability effects. Some people raise the issue of protection from harm, Milgram didn’t use real shocks so the only harm used was the teacher feeling stressed about administering a shock and Milgrams debrief shows that most participants were actually grateful in taking part in the study as they learnt things about themselves, they didn’t feel that they shouldn’t have taken part in the study.
A very thorough blog, and you have definitely picked a difficult topic to discuss as ethics can be very wishy-washy. The only point I can raise is that despite having a keen application if the topic it feels to me that you’ve skipped over the question raised in your title (‘do ethics hinder potential findings of research?’) and talked more about historical examples of ethical and unethical studies. Perhapsif you brought in some, less known, but more modern studies that have been considered to be unethical. You could also perhaps argue the point some researchers have fallen victim to is that the needs of the majority outweigh the needs of the few and have gone in to conduct studies that ethics give a no-no; for example the syphilis ‘studies’ performed in third world countries by withholding treatment. That in itself is inhuman and could aid research but was unethical
I liked the way that you first explained about ethics and the different ethical codes that need to be followed. You then followed this up with an example which causes much debate even 50 years after it was conducted. There is still a mix of opinions on whether what milgrim did was ethical or unethical. The codes of ethics were not around when Milgrim conducted his obedience experiment, however even though this is the case he still followed some of the ethics that are in place today. If he had followed them all we would not have been able to get the information that he achieved because the participants would have known that the person wasnt being shocked and would have defied the point of it. Therefore in order to attain the results it was neccasary for this to happen.
Another thing that Milgrim actually did was talked to the participants after the experiment and found that 84% of them actually were glad that they took part. Now obviously we would not be able to know that these days but that is a very high number. After a year he also sent psychiatrist to each participant to test whether they had any problems from this and found that they didnt. In truth hindsight is a great thing and we know this now, but Milgram didnt know whether it was going to have any lasting effects when he carried it out. This is important in the code of ethics these days and is another factor as why it could not be carried out in modern day society. Good blog and very interesting.
To me, Milgram’s research is one of the most important psychological studies ever conducted. But I do not believe it was ethically reprehensible, and would argue that he went out of his way to ensure that the care of participants was standardised way before his time. His only crime perhaps was deception, but what study is not guilty of that? Most participants in the follow-up written in his own study reported not regretting taking part and were glad to contribute. Furthermore, his study has been replicated in recent years, suggesting it is up to ethical standards (Burger, 2009).
I think a more important issue is the issue of animal ethics, whilst charities like PETA will have you believe that animal experimentation is ethically wrong and does not contribute to science. I would suggest that it has been key to animal experimentation, providing us with: the polio vaccine, and means for kidney transplant and dialysis. Any prohibition on animal experimentation, I believe would be a great hindrance for scientific progression.
http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animal-testing-bad-science.aspx
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Click to access Replicating-Milgrampdf.pdf