Ethical issues in graduate research

Exercise 4: milgram role-play

• You are different members of the Institutional Review Board of a prominent east-coast U.S. university. Your job is to evaluate the research proposal presented by your instructor who is role-playing as famous social psychologist, Stanley Milgram.
• Read Kloempkin's short article on IRBs. You can access it by the URL provided in the second reference section. Study, also, the principles and applications set forth in the Belmont Report as summarized above. (You can also access the report which is fairly short through the URL provided below.)
• Then read Milgram's research proposal (actually a pretend proposal since the original experiment did not go through an IRB.) Evaluate this proposal using the Belmont criteria as well as the IRB criteria outlined by Kloempkin.
• You will look at videos made of some of the actual subjects of the Milgram experiments. View these and assess the actual impacts of the experience for them.
• Milgram (your teacher role-playing) will make a new proposal before you as an IRB member for a second phase of his experiment. Given what you have learned about the actual results of the experiment and what you have seen from the videos made of the experiments and using the Belmont principles and IRB criteria, should you allow Milgram to continue with his experiments.

What did you learn?

References

1. The Belmont Report (http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm)
2. Gary Comstock and David Edelman. Open Seminar in Research Ethics . http://openseminar.org/ethics/.
3. Doris, J.M. (2002). Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Frey, William. "Business Ethics," Connexions, January 2, 2009, http://cnx.org/content/col10491/1.9/.
5. Gladwell, M. (2007). "Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information" in The New Yorker , January 8, pp. 44-53.
6. Charles E. Harris, Michael S. Pritchard, and Michael J. Rabins, Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases , Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995.
7. Hickman, L. (1991). John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology . Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
8. Johnson, D., Wetmore, J. (2008) Technology and Society: Building Our Sociotechnical Future . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
9. Kevles, D.J. (1998) The Baltimore Case: A trial of politics, science, and character. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
10. Elena Lugo, Ética Profesional para la Ingeniería , Ediciones Riqueña, Librería Universal.
11. McLean, B. and Elkind, P. (2004) The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron , Portfolio.
12. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority . New York, NY: Harper and Row.
13. Mimi, S and Watkins, S. (2003). Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron. New York: Random House.
14. Sismondo, S. (2004). An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies . Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 23-24.
15. Steneck, N. Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research Office of Research Integrity. (http://ori.dhhs.gov/publications/ori_intro_text.shtml)
16. Whitbeck, C. (1998). Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research. New York: Cambridge University Press.
17. Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil . New York: Random House.

References for milgram role play

• Svara, J. Milgram Results at http://openseminar.org/ethics/courses/79/modules/2376/index/screen.do. Accessed 9/16/09.
• Svara, J. Milgram Consent Form at http://openseminar.org/ethics/courses/79/modules/2376/index/screen.do. Accessed 9/16/09.
• Svara, J. Milgram Request for Approval at http://openseminar.org/ethics/courses/79/modules/2376/index/screen.do. Accessed 9/16/09.
• Kloempken, V. The Institutional Review Board at http://openseminar.org/ethics/courses/79/modules/2376/index/screen.do. Accessed 9/16/09.

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Presentations for graduate awareness workshop

Below are two presentations upon which different variations of the Graduate Awareness Workshop will be built. They both explore basic and intermediate moral concepts such as rights, duties, plagiarism, and integrity. They also contain material and exercises designed to help capstone design courses in engineering and science effectively integrate ethical issues. In addition to the presentations, the last media file contains a document that provides the Pre-Test, Post-Test, and GAW evaluation forms in Word format.