When I think about it more, I think the crux of what the course tried to convey regarding the distinction between ethics and morals is that morals, whether codified or not, are personal beliefs, whereas ethics are those morals that are standardized and applied uniformly; thus, an example would be a code of ethics that lawyers must adhere to which may at times override a lawyer’s morals in order to ensure justice is preserved.
Date Modified: 17 Dec 09    7:30 PM MST

I share your views. This is a case of responsible conduct between the researcher and the graduate student. Since, the scenario is not detailed it is hard to conclusively classify the ethical and moral responsibility of Sandra or Dr. Frederick to each other. However, it is obvious that something is wrong since both parties are not in a win-win situation. And, there are a lot of potential conflicts between Sandra and the ‘sponsor’.

Everton.

Good question. I will pick Sandra as one who should worry most about this dilemma, given what was at stake in terms of final dissertation.

All parties are accountable players in this scenario if the potential conflict becomes a real one. However, Dr. Frederick’s employer (University?) should worry most. If he is self-employed then he should worry most. The responsibility rises to the top of the command chain or to the person most capable of changing the outcome.

Everton

Thanks for a great post – nice job!

I concur with you that Dr. Frederick abandoned his roles as advisor and mentor. He did not fully disclose the purpose, the sources,the expectations, the impact on the student, and the risk assessment.

The threat of funding cuts can be a strong motivator for suppressing or manipulating data to show the funding source in a positive light.

Dan Benjamin

It is always a pleasure to read your posts this quarter as it was this past Autumn.

After I read your analysis of the scenario and your response to my initial posting, I see how I was amiss in my assessment of Sandra’s predicament in that Dr. Frederick had a moral obligation to support her as new researcher and PhD candidate under direct supervision. There is not only a “moral duty” (Cheung, 2009) for Frederick to support, and to some degree protect, Sandra from compromising her studies, but a professional code of practice.

I reflected on your comment on the moral-ethical continuum and pose this concept: Morals are belief system of an individual, shaped by societal context, whereas ethics are beliefs about what is acceptable for the society as a whole, not the individual. This distinction was made in the work of De George (as cited in Fischer, 2004, p.397): “…ethics presupposes the existence of morality, as well as the existence of moral people who judge right from wrong and generally act in accordance with norms they accept and to which they and the rest of society hold others.” Scenario 1 shows how the individual beliefs of Dr Frederick are shaped by the context of corporate sponsorship, yet simultaneously at direct odds with the agreed upon practices made explicit by the University.

Again Robin, a pleasure to engage with your thinking. I was comforted by the fact that “favourable” was spelt according to the Commonwealth’s code of practice

References

Cheung, R. (2009, December 17). In 2000 when I began my MBA studies [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/thd/thd.learn?CourseID=3818508&UnitNumber=2&COID=257&Mode=&TopicGroupID=16815092&ThreadViewMode=&ThreadSortBy=&AdvOpts=&47=6016409&TopicID=0&RSOID=16815092&PageYOffset=1782#

Fischer, J. (2004). Social responsibility and ethics: Clarifying the concepts. Journal of Business Ethics, 52(4), 391-400. doi: 10.1007/s10551-004-2545-y
Date Modified: 19 Dec 09    1:00 AM MST

Thank you for taking the time to read and think about my post. It might also be comforting to know that we are now one and the same person apparently

There is one thing in particular that you have just remindfed me about, from the APA Workshop with Jeff Zuckerman in the October 2008 residency in St. Charles, IL (held at a nice little resort, too: www.pheasantrun.com and it looks like there will be another there in the quaint little town that made me feel comfortable being in the US, which I actually didn’t feel so much when I had the opportunity to accompany some academic advisors to Chicago proper for some Chicago Deep Dish Pizza).

I recall Dr. Zuckerman stating that APA stipulated specifically American spellings, which is a very big challenge for me to remember–and worse, American spellings make me feel rather uncomfortable. Without getting into the debate about how I also feel uncomfortable about how we must clear American customs agents *before* even leaving our sovereign soil at Canadian airports, I will just say, it also is not necesarily British spelling that makes me feel better either; there are words with uniquely Canadian spellings that I prefer, such as “yogourt.” This spelling is based neither on the British “yoghurt” nor the the American “yogurt,” but I believe has a French-Canadian etymology.

Although I tend to use the pocket edition of the APA manual as as reference since it is easier to locate specific sections and much less unwieldy (more wieldy?), on page 96 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: “Spelling should conform to standard American English as exemplified in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2005), the standard spelling reference for APA journals and books.”

The other major difficulty I have adapting to APA is the lack of hyphenation (which is also inconsistent); my father still writes “to-day,” although for me it is more compound words that I feel require hyphenation, especially terms such as pre- and post-operative, for example.

That said, last term Dr. Bush did mention he would accept nonAmerican spellings, but in practice whenever I missed any (since I do not use the American dictionary in Word by default) I did lose some APA points for `spelling errors.“ It will continue to be a challenge, since to me, “color” not only looks wrong, but makes me want to pronounce it as “cull-ore.”

When I reflected upon that post, I remembered a situation in Grade 11 where our chemistry teacher, Mr. Wade, was introducing the Quantum model of the atom, where electrons are not discrete particles circulating about the nucleus, such as in the Bohr atom. I then pointed out that even though such shifts in paradigms do invalidate some aspects of a previous model, they still retain certain didactic value.

While we understand the models are not sufficient past a certain point, they are still valuable for understanding the basics of how systems work. In physics, for example, while we know that Newtonian classical mechanics do not apply at the subatomic scale or at high velocities and altitudes due to relativistic effects, it is impractical to take into account relativistic effects, for example, of time and length dilation, when considering moving cars, since the relativistic effects are negligible at those scales.

Similarly, in terms of understanding chemical bonding, reactions, and behaviours of substances in various states, earlier models such as the Rutherford raisin bun model or the Bohr atom are sufficient to understand atomic and molecular behaviours without the complexities of quantum mechanics.

In the future we likely will encounter new information that supercedes our current quantum model–perhaps from the Large Hadron Collider experiments–but regardless, it has held for a certain body of knowledge for a number of decades, and the value it holds for understanding behaviours of subatomic particles and chemical reactions will ensure that long after the quantum model is superceded, students far into the future will still be learning it.