find it really interesting how far people will go within their research to get information on whatever it is that they are researching. Example being the lady that we talked about in class that got arrested in order to get information about women in prison. I have worked at a jail and I would not go that far to get information about that subject. The other research did on syphilis; how the cure was known, but was not administered to the people in the study in order to get more information. In this process a lot of lives were lost and for what? After the lecture and reading this article I am not shocked that the researchers did not report their findings of the drugs being sold in the dorms, because they wanted more information and if they would have disclosed what they knew they wouldn’t have been able to get all the information needed to complete a book. Although I understand why these researchers did what they did I think that it is wrong for the simple fact that drugs are being sold and consumed at school, which is a drug free zone.
I found this research case very interesting, because it shows how far a social researcher would go to understand their subject. I do agree that the only way possible to understand your subject is to fully integrate into the subject’s environment. However I do believe that there should be ethical guidelines established on the research being conducted, and as we have discussed in class there are guidelines that each researcher should follow. I believe that a social researcher should have the ethical responsibility to report to the authorities any harmful acts that could lead to injury, endangerment or death to a test subject or an individual in the same environment. However I do believe that a researcher should not be obligate to disclose his sources or subjects information in the case the information is requested by law. I believe that a researcher should be able to keep that information private, since an agreement of confidentiality or anonymity was agreed on. If a researcher is required to turn in his sources, the researcher would lose trust with future test subjects and would affect the researcher’s future research. To conclude, I agree with one of the callers that called into KPBS to discuss the ethics of studying crime. The caller mention, “In the discipline of sociology, you don't make judgments. And if you decide to reveal your sources because of some moralistic imperative, then you have become nothing but a common spy”
I had listened to this and only thought that the length a researcher was going through was a bit excessive and then I begin a book by Sudhir Venkatesh called Gang Leader For A Day. This was exactly the same sort of story in where a researcher had placed himself in a volatile situation (to say at best) only to obtain what is it like to be a black person in the city of Chicago. Both of these situations are unethical on so many levels. To stand by with knowledge of big drug deals or people being beaten up was amazing to me. Now that being said I can now say that with this research I now have knowledge of how the drug world works in the inner city of Chicago. This information would not have been available to me in this book had Sudhir not conducted his research and wrote his book. These ethical and unethical practices are riding such a fine fine line. I think even more so in the criminal justice field of science.
This article has definitely confirmed the corruption that is heard about in the criminal justice system. It’s sad to read about those with gold making the rules. Judging by the numbers that were given in this article, these guys were making a million plus per year. I haven’t read this book but I’m going to assume a lot of that money was most likely kept safe somewhere. Hopefully, in the future we are able to treat every criminal the same. The real interesting and slightly less disheartening topic is that of the ethnographic studies. I do believe, you can only go so far before you become one of the criminals. I would not do well in submerging myself into one of these situations and not hold on to my law abiding mentality. Even if it’s as simple as marijuana, that idiot who is going to smoke it may decide to take a death ride and kill someone. It stops becoming an academic study when lives are in danger. Bottom line even one were to obtain a permit to study these criminals, they should still have the obligation to help local law enforcement do their jobs. The safety of our society depends on it.
Unfortunately Im no authority on ethics but I am well versed in understanding what human rights mean and what public safety and promotion of the general welfare mean as well. I believe that we can consider that something illegal(and\or) criminal is taking place and potentially harmful to other people,then lets share that particular information. Stop letting the rules govern life or death because it may or may not be ethical. Nevertheless, some information is worth going through the trouble to attain in order to get beneath the surface in some general areas, especially crime. The more we know, the more we can do in order to prevent it!!!!!
Ethics should be completely thrown out when hard crime is involved. I believe that to find great detail and good facts you must break certain ethics and consent is not necessary. Going undercover is a smart way to research without even needing consent. The only way a researcher can get what they are there for is for if the participants are in acting normal as if no one there that does not belong is present. There has to be a degree of deception, so you can really understand what is going on without a change in nature. I do not think criminals have the right to have privacy, because they will never tell inside information if privacy is given. Academic research is a good enough reason to knock the ethic argument out.
I am not at all surprised by the unethical research that continually goes on in the US or other countries. People are curious and many people chose to take that curiosity to the next level and many people involved in the research are too scared to come forward or they feel the research is to valuable to stop. Yes I agree with the person in this radio clip that did not tell the police about drug activity because there goes his source of information and the possibility that people will not trust him again and therefore he wouldn’t be able to conduct this type of research in the future. Learning about all these unethical experiments disgust me for the simple fact that for many people research has a bad name and the do not want to participate because of the stories they have heard. Another thing that really upsets me about this unethical research lies in government control and permission. Take for instance the MK ULTRA experiment performed by the CIA, a government agency, which allowed researchers to give participants LSD, poisons, and radiation all in the name of “national security”. These studies continue to go on because of people’s curiosity and most of the time the people responsible for these “experiments/research” are not severely punished and continue to perform some sort of research in the future. Researchers disregard public safety and the welfare of their participants for their own selfish gains and this problem continues to happen all over the world.
I found the research case reported by Erik Fritsbold, co-author of “Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class,” to be very interesting and informative on the ethics of researchers who study crime. I can understand why an author writing a book on dorm room dealers would want to personally research every element of drug dealing that takes place in dorm rooms. While living in a college dorm, Fritsbold and several colleagues observed many drug deals each day, and also many criminal acts that were drug related. Some sold drugs to support their own habit, while the major dealers were selling drugs for unbelievable profits, with no concern for the futures of the young college students, which drugs can destroy and often lead them into a life of crime. I was surprised to learn that there were so few ethics for the researcher to follow, and that they did not immediately report the facts of drugs being sold in the dorms, possibly to further their research. I feel there should definitely be more stated legal ethics particular to researchers. Researchers on crime are very important to our society and helping protect our youth from these drug dealers in dorms, who ruin the lives and futures of many our young college students.
After reading my fellow bloggers’ logs one aspect stands out the old saying is the glass is half full or half empty. Everyone is on their high horse of ethnics and civil rights for people; let’s push them out of the window a second. Without the far sight of researchers or scientists the advancement of the field of science would still be in the Stone Age. Although we call experiments like Unit 731, Nazi Experiments and United States Tuskegee Study (Untreated Syphilis) unethical only a few people lost their lives in the expansion of science. In many of the cases America intervenes, giving immunity to the scientists or researcher who performed these notorious the media would call them. Should a nation wait to see what happens to a few against the needs of the many? For instance an experiment done to replace a person’s limbs or graphing of skin after a burn (The Right To Die) video, the knowledge attained is unrenowned in the field of science. In the “Right to Die” video a doctor striped the civil liberties of his patient when he treated him against his will the young man was in a gas explosion which killed his father and burned him head to toe. The young man only wished to die but was forced treatment by the doctor that led to the improvement of treating burn victims. Some people might find my previous statements curl so instead of experiments on the working class how about the prisoners on death row! Everyone is talking about unethical experimentation like chemical, biological warfare, physical and psychological harm to humans. What about the unethical experimentation on animals that have taken place for years, everyone forgets about them? People go on with their everyday lives not thinking about the process of getting food to and from the supermarkets, the chemicals needed to increase the shelf-life of a can of fruit. Someone or something was experimented on to get the results needed to sustain Americans way of living. Corporation for example will not politely hand over their secrets of getting people to buy their products or services. For years the tobacco company’s knew their products were harmful to public base on their own research but greed over powered their ethnics, People have died over the years from exposure to tobacco products. The question one should ask is how far the government or corporations willing to go in the advancement of power. The experiments listed are ones that the world knows about, people don’t realize that most scientist have labs at their homes, who’s to say you not already in his/her control group ha!
Pretty interesting and good article on the ethics behind research methods involving crimes. The idea to go into a dorm room to conduct a study is genius I lived in the dorms for two years while attending Junior College and even at my small school there were a lot of drug trades and sells going on. Mainly just marijuana and pain pills, but everyone knew about it and nobody did a thing about it. I remember in a few cases where the janitors and the "dorm moms" (RA's) for our dorms found some drugs and literally did nothing about it they just looked the other way. It would have been very interesting to be apart of this study or maybe engaged in a study at my old Junior College. Personally I think they should condone a study like this at colleges everywhere and my guess is that the results would be shocking. More people use marijuana in this country than people think. And if most schools are like the one I went to it's very esy to get access to as well.
I believe that these types of research studies are important to better understand the different crimes that occur or can occur in a society. So, in a sense a researcher does have to become a criminal so that they can record observations and the reasoning behind these crimes by being seeing first-hand the operations that are going on. Seeing only one side of the story doesn’t help see the big picture of why certain crimes are committed. Looking at only one side of the story only offers a limited amount of explanations but trying to see the other side of the story can offer explanations that we might’ve never thought of. I think this study was also interesting because from the observations they said that there was very minimal harm done and he doesn’t go into detail about the harm that he witnessed. Now if there was minimal harm done and nobody was killed, then how come it’s made to be such a crime, other than the selling of illegal drugs? I believe that there are certain drugs that could be legalized and regulated, just like alcohol, and it could reduce the violence involved with the trade. The study helps to see that even though there is a war on drugs there are individuals who engage in this behavior who don’t suffer the consequences, but why is that? If there are people being incarcerated for the same acts of crime that these individuals engaged in.
The article on “The Ethics of Studying Crime” was very interesting. I agree with Candy when she stated that the researcher was a bit extreme with his research. I think that when you are researching a topic especially in the criminal justice field, and you want to know from a realistic point of view, there will be times that what is considered ethical will be questioned. I also, think that when a researcher is basically undercover, and person’s well-being is jeopardized, no matter what confidentiality clause is signed, it should be reported to the proper authorities. When research is taking place one question should definitely be considered. How can one benefit from the research. This book “Dorm room Dealers” just proved, in my opinion what we already know. Which is that, the criminal justice system is flawed. I do think that this author was not looking out for the best interest in research; I think that he was just trying to write a book to make a book. Who knows maybe this research made universities more aware of what goes on in the dorm rooms and the amount of drug trafficking, but for the drug dealers, it did nothing but give them a slap on the wrist.
I personally believe that overall if we are witnessing a crime that is harmful to society and that is potentially threatening to the person involved or others then under the law we are moe than obligated to report the activity. Nevertheless, in order to do really good reseach and understand crime on the level that we need to in order to reform some criminal acts, we need to understand those acts from a grass-roots level. Only research that enables us to delve within the act itself will allow us to determine what preventive measures can be used to eliminate certain crimes.
find it really interesting how far people will go within their research to get information on whatever it is that they are researching. Example being the lady that we talked about in class that got arrested in order to get information about women in prison. I have worked at a jail and I would not go that far to get information about that subject. The other research did on syphilis; how the cure was known, but was not administered to the people in the study in order to get more information. In this process a lot of lives were lost and for what? After the lecture and reading this article I am not shocked that the researchers did not report their findings of the drugs being sold in the dorms, because they wanted more information and if they would have disclosed what they knew they wouldn’t have been able to get all the information needed to complete a book. Although I understand why these researchers did what they did I think that it is wrong for the simple fact that drugs are being sold and consumed at school, which is a drug free zone.
ReplyDeleteI found this research case very interesting, because it shows how far a social researcher would go to understand their subject. I do agree that the only way possible to understand your subject is to fully integrate into the subject’s environment. However I do believe that there should be ethical guidelines established on the research being conducted, and as we have discussed in class there are guidelines that each researcher should follow. I believe that a social researcher should have the ethical responsibility to report to the authorities any harmful acts that could lead to injury, endangerment or death to a test subject or an individual in the same environment. However I do believe that a researcher should not be obligate to disclose his sources or subjects information in the case the information is requested by law. I believe that a researcher should be able to keep that information private, since an agreement of confidentiality or anonymity was agreed on. If a researcher is required to turn in his sources, the researcher would lose trust with future test subjects and would affect the researcher’s future research. To conclude, I agree with one of the callers that called into KPBS to discuss the ethics of studying crime. The caller mention, “In the discipline of sociology, you don't make judgments. And if you decide to reveal your sources because of some moralistic imperative, then you have become nothing but a common spy”
ReplyDeleteI had listened to this and only thought that the length a researcher was going through was a bit excessive and then I begin a book by Sudhir Venkatesh called Gang Leader For A Day. This was exactly the same sort of story in where a researcher had placed himself in a volatile situation (to say at best) only to obtain what is it like to be a black person in the city of Chicago. Both of these situations are unethical on so many levels. To stand by with knowledge of big drug deals or people being beaten up was amazing to me. Now that being said I can now say that with this research I now have knowledge of how the drug world works in the inner city of Chicago. This information would not have been available to me in this book had Sudhir not conducted his research and wrote his book. These ethical and unethical practices are riding such a fine fine line. I think even more so in the criminal justice field of science.
ReplyDeleteThis article has definitely confirmed the corruption that is heard about in the criminal justice system. It’s sad to read about those with gold making the rules. Judging by the numbers that were given in this article, these guys were making a million plus per year. I haven’t read this book but I’m going to assume a lot of that money was most likely kept safe somewhere. Hopefully, in the future we are able to treat every criminal the same. The real interesting and slightly less disheartening topic is that of the ethnographic studies. I do believe, you can only go so far before you become one of the criminals. I would not do well in submerging myself into one of these situations and not hold on to my law abiding mentality. Even if it’s as simple as marijuana, that idiot who is going to smoke it may decide to take a death ride and kill someone. It stops becoming an academic study when lives are in danger. Bottom line even one were to obtain a permit to study these criminals, they should still have the obligation to help local law enforcement do their jobs. The safety of our society depends on it.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately Im no authority on ethics but I am well versed in understanding what human rights mean and what public safety and promotion of the general welfare mean as well. I believe that we can consider that something illegal(and\or) criminal is taking place and potentially harmful to other people,then lets share that particular information. Stop letting the rules govern life or death because it may or may not be ethical. Nevertheless, some information is worth going through the trouble to attain in order to get beneath the surface in some general areas, especially crime. The more we know, the more we can do in order to prevent it!!!!!
ReplyDeleteEthics should be completely thrown out when hard crime is involved. I believe that to find great detail and good facts you must break certain ethics and consent is not necessary. Going undercover is a smart way to research without even needing consent. The only way a researcher can get what they are there for is for if the participants are in acting normal as if no one there that does not belong is present. There has to be a degree of deception, so you can really understand what is going on without a change in nature. I do not think criminals have the right to have privacy, because they will never tell inside information if privacy is given. Academic research is a good enough reason to knock the ethic argument out.
ReplyDelete-Daniella Romero
I am not at all surprised by the unethical research that continually goes on in the US or other countries. People are curious and many people chose to take that curiosity to the next level and many people involved in the research are too scared to come forward or they feel the research is to valuable to stop. Yes I agree with the person in this radio clip that did not tell the police about drug activity because there goes his source of information and the possibility that people will not trust him again and therefore he wouldn’t be able to conduct this type of research in the future. Learning about all these unethical experiments disgust me for the simple fact that for many people research has a bad name and the do not want to participate because of the stories they have heard. Another thing that really upsets me about this unethical research lies in government control and permission. Take for instance the MK ULTRA experiment performed by the CIA, a government agency, which allowed researchers to give participants LSD, poisons, and radiation all in the name of “national security”. These studies continue to go on because of people’s curiosity and most of the time the people responsible for these “experiments/research” are not severely punished and continue to perform some sort of research in the future.
ReplyDeleteResearchers disregard public safety and the welfare of their participants for their own selfish gains and this problem continues to happen all over the world.
I found the research case reported by Erik Fritsbold, co-author of “Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class,” to be very interesting and informative on the ethics of researchers who study crime. I can understand why an author writing a book on dorm room dealers would want to personally research every element of drug dealing that takes place in dorm rooms.
ReplyDeleteWhile living in a college dorm, Fritsbold and several colleagues observed many drug deals each day, and also many criminal acts that were drug related. Some sold drugs to support their own habit, while the major dealers were selling drugs for unbelievable profits, with no concern for the futures of the young college students, which drugs can destroy and often lead them into a life of crime.
I was surprised to learn that there were so few ethics for the researcher to follow, and that they did not immediately report the facts of drugs being sold in the dorms, possibly to further their research. I feel there should definitely be more stated legal ethics particular to researchers. Researchers on crime are very important to our society and helping protect our youth from these drug dealers in dorms, who ruin the lives and futures of many our young college students.
After reading my fellow bloggers’ logs one aspect stands out the old saying is the glass is half full or half empty. Everyone is on their high horse of ethnics and civil rights for people; let’s push them out of the window a second. Without the far sight of researchers or scientists the advancement of the field of science would still be in the Stone Age. Although we call experiments like Unit 731, Nazi Experiments and United States Tuskegee Study (Untreated Syphilis) unethical only a few people lost their lives in the expansion of science. In many of the cases America intervenes, giving immunity to the scientists or researcher who performed these notorious the media would call them. Should a nation wait to see what happens to a few against the needs of the many? For instance an experiment done to replace a person’s limbs or graphing of skin after a burn (The Right To Die) video, the knowledge attained is unrenowned in the field of science. In the “Right to Die” video a doctor striped the civil liberties of his patient when he treated him against his will the young man was in a gas explosion which killed his father and burned him head to toe. The young man only wished to die but was forced treatment by the doctor that led to the improvement of treating burn victims.
ReplyDeleteSome people might find my previous statements curl so instead of experiments on the working class how about the prisoners on death row! Everyone is talking about unethical experimentation like chemical, biological warfare, physical and psychological harm to humans. What about the unethical experimentation on animals that have taken place for years, everyone forgets about them? People go on with their everyday lives not thinking about the process of getting food to and from the supermarkets, the chemicals needed to increase the shelf-life of a can of fruit. Someone or something was experimented on to get the results needed to sustain Americans way of living. Corporation for example will not politely hand over their secrets of getting people to buy their products or services. For years the tobacco company’s knew their products were harmful to public base on their own research but greed over powered their ethnics, People have died over the years from exposure to tobacco products. The question one should ask is how far the government or corporations willing to go in the advancement of power. The experiments listed are ones that the world knows about, people don’t realize that most scientist have labs at their homes, who’s to say you not already in his/her control group ha!
Pretty interesting and good article on the ethics behind research methods involving crimes. The idea to go into a dorm room to conduct a study is genius I lived in the dorms for two years while attending Junior College and even at my small school there were a lot of drug trades and sells going on. Mainly just marijuana and pain pills, but everyone knew about it and nobody did a thing about it. I remember in a few cases where the janitors and the "dorm moms" (RA's) for our dorms found some drugs and literally did nothing about it they just looked the other way. It would have been very interesting to be apart of this study or maybe engaged in a study at my old Junior College. Personally I think they should condone a study like this at colleges everywhere and my guess is that the results would be shocking. More people use marijuana in this country than people think. And if most schools are like the one I went to it's very esy to get access to as well.
ReplyDeleteI believe that these types of research studies are important to better understand the different crimes that occur or can occur in a society. So, in a sense a researcher does have to become a criminal so that they can record observations and the reasoning behind these crimes by being seeing first-hand the operations that are going on. Seeing only one side of the story doesn’t help see the big picture of why certain crimes are committed. Looking at only one side of the story only offers a limited amount of explanations but trying to see the other side of the story can offer explanations that we might’ve never thought of.
ReplyDeleteI think this study was also interesting because from the observations they said that there was very minimal harm done and he doesn’t go into detail about the harm that he witnessed. Now if there was minimal harm done and nobody was killed, then how come it’s made to be such a crime, other than the selling of illegal drugs? I believe that there are certain drugs that could be legalized and regulated, just like alcohol, and it could reduce the violence involved with the trade. The study helps to see that even though there is a war on drugs there are individuals who engage in this behavior who don’t suffer the consequences, but why is that? If there are people being incarcerated for the same acts of crime that these individuals engaged in.
The article on “The Ethics of Studying Crime” was very interesting. I agree with Candy when she stated that the researcher was a bit extreme with his research. I think that when you are researching a topic especially in the criminal justice field, and you want to know from a realistic point of view, there will be times that what is considered ethical will be questioned. I also, think that when a researcher is basically undercover, and person’s well-being is jeopardized, no matter what confidentiality clause is signed, it should be reported to the proper authorities. When research is taking place one question should definitely be considered. How can one benefit from the research. This book “Dorm room Dealers” just proved, in my opinion what we already know. Which is that, the criminal justice system is flawed. I do think that this author was not looking out for the best interest in research; I think that he was just trying to write a book to make a book. Who knows maybe this research made universities more aware of what goes on in the dorm rooms and the amount of drug trafficking, but for the drug dealers, it did nothing but give them a slap on the wrist.
ReplyDeleteI personally believe that overall if we are witnessing a crime that is harmful to society and that is potentially threatening to the person involved or others then under the law we are moe than obligated to report the activity. Nevertheless, in order to do really good reseach and understand crime on the level that we need to in order to reform some criminal acts, we need to understand those acts from a grass-roots level. Only research that enables us to delve within the act itself will allow us to determine what preventive measures can be used to eliminate certain crimes.
Delete