ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESEARCH

ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESEARCH

1. Aims and objectives

   • Is objective research possible?
   • What were the sources of bias that affect the objectivity of research?
   • Of what value is the 'truth' in social research
   • How may research be ethically engaged?
   • What is the source, or grounds, of our ethical engagement

2. Bacon and Empiricism

   • Underpins some of the more naive approaches to the status of truth in this project
   • "There can only be two ways of searching and discovering the truth... middle axioms... [and] the most general axioms of all" Bacon 1620
     • WHY? Idols of the Human Mind - Bacon, The New Organon
   • "Minds... [influenced by] dogmas of philosophies... formed by intercourse and association of men with another"
     • "Everyone... has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours the light of nature, owing to their own proper and peculiar nature"
   • Difficulty in finding truth because we all have various idols

3. Objectivity

   • Problem: getting out the cave so you can see and experience things as they are
   • Important for ethics: Allan Megill 1994
     • Absolute objectivity: "representing things as they really are"
     • Disciplinary objectivity: "a consensus among members of a particular research community"
     • Procedural objectivity: "aims at the practice of an impersonal method of investigation and administration"
   • Foundationalism: "presents research... as producing conclusions whose validity follows automatically the data on which they are based" Hammersley 2000

4. Bias: a source of error

   • "The illegitimate intrusion of external factors, notably the subjectivity (the cave) of the researcher" Hammersley

5. The ethics of objectivity

   • "The field of ethics, also called moral philosophy, involves systematising, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour" Fieser
   • 2 kinds of ethics: teleological and utilitarian
     • Telelogical: "orients each goal or activity toward the goal or target which constitutes the good" May 1980
       • Ethical research is solely guided by the search for truthful knowledge
         • Unethical research is biased research - guided by interests beyond the search for truthful knowledge
           • Distracted by other goods - will disturb the events and the ethical research
             • Right goal: scientific research: truth
     • Utilitarian/consequentionalist: "chief test of human action... is the good or harm it produces" May 1980
       • Aim: produce benefits through truthful knowledge
         • Unethical research does more harm to subjects/society
           • Truth serves the greater good

6. A case study: Hindmarsh Island Bridge

   • Murray River South Aus
   • 1989: govt propose bridge built
   • May 1994 group of Ngarrindjeri declared island sacred
   • June 1994: anthropologist Deane Fergue confirms
     • July 1994: Govt declares 25 yr ban on construction
     • Purpose of anthro: not to decide politically right - determine fact
       • May 1995: aboriginals denounce sacred
   • Ron Brunton: 'The Hindmarsh Island Bridge: and the credibility of Australian Anthropolgy" 1996
     • Ignored historical evidence (Island = not traditional)
     • Ignored those in opposition
       • Contrary evidence not regarded
     • Systematically biased towards the interests of the aboriginal women and predisposed their beliefs, accounts

7. James Weiner "Bad Aboriginal Anthropolgy: a reply to Ron Brunton" 1996

   • Brunton: politically interested and motivated - biased
   • Religious belief and political interest are not separate
     • "Under todays condition of indemnity formation in a self-consciously multicultural nation"
   • What constitutes the truth cannot be abstracted from present and historical political process - normative ideas: politicians do politics, social researchers do research (Weiner)