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The following short ethical dilemmas, supplied by Dr. Will McClatchey, University of Hawaii,
provide good points of departure for ethical discussions in the classroom. Please send us more!
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1. While developing relationships with a tribal people, you are asked by several village men (not leaders) to visit their home in the evening for a night of serious drinking. Alcohol is a part of this traditional culture. What do you do? What do you say?
2. While working in a country with very strict laws about narcotics, you are approached by one of your best informants and asked to smoke a few joints. Assume that you are working in a culture to which marijuana is introduced. What do you do? What do you say?
3. You are aware that your informants are withholding some "important" information from you because they know that you plan to publish your results. Is it acceptable to tell them that you would like to learn the information, but will agree to not publish that part of the data? What would the implications be of putting this information in your field notes?
4. In order to learn the secret information of a particular religious sect, you must become indoctrinated into the religion and accept it as your own. What do you do?
5. While walking through the forest, alone, you see through the trees a secret ritual taking place. You know that in this culture only the initiated are allowed to observe the rituals. The ritual has never been documented by any ethnographer. Do you quietly observe? Do you leave? What do you do?
6. After returning to the United States, you are approached by a fellow researcher who knows that you have collected medicinal plants from a unique culture. The researcher wants to test your specimens in her new bioassay. Her assay is likely to determine some very interesting results. What are your considerations about this proposition?
7. While preparing your dissertation, you are approached by the University Legal Counsel and instructed to hand over all of your research notes because it has been determined that some of the indigenous plant germ plasm upon which you have been working is very valuable. What should you do or say?
8. After returning from the field, you receive a letter from the village in which you worked. They ask for you to return all samples and notes to them, because they do not feel that they want to share their knowledge at this time. What do you do?
9. While working on your graduate project, you accidentally learn that an element of your major professor's research is fraudulent. Further investigation reveals that your professor has clearly published false data in the past. You are very near to graduation. What do you do?
10. While studying ethnobotany in a traditional culture: Late one night, you are awakened by a beautiful member of the opposite sex slipping into bed with you. What do you do? What do you say?
11. Due to a change in the Federal Government, your research permits and permits to export plant materials and data are now invalid. You have an opportunity to leave the country with all materials, and no one will ever know that your permit was not valid. What do you do?
12. An informant has explained to you that some of the people that you wish to interview will not talk with you unless you tell them that you are married with ten children (which is false). In order to complete your project, do you tell them this?
13. As part of your agreement to work in a country, you agreed to give a weekly lecture about biology to a local elementary school. In discussions with the children, you learn that they have not learned about evolution and that the current teacher has taught them that evolution is evil. What do you do?
14. A reporter from the National Trash Newspaper approaches you for information about a popular new herbal remedy. The reporter provides you with a script of prepared answers that include some misleading and false claims. The reporter offers you $10,000 to provide a short, scripted mock interview. What do you do?
15. While working in the field, one of your guides asks whether he/she may have one of your "critical" pieces of field equipment (computer, GIS, backpack, plant press, notebook, camera, etc.). What do you do? |
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Return to SEB Ethics Statement |
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