1. You find some good images on the web that would look good on your site. You copy and paste them to you blog

On the front end context we can say that using someone else’s property without their permission is unethical. But for the above case we cannot argue that it is unethical unless we know about the type of images used. Some images that is available in the internet may contain digital license which is then used only by the given permission. But there are also other images which is allowed to use freely without having any license. Using the images which has copyright is not acceptable. So better to use websites that provide free contents.

2. You are in a hurry to finish an assignment and you find the perfect explanation of a difficult concept on Wikipedia. you decide to copy it into your work.

Taking data from Wikipedia cannot be related with any ethical issues since the data provided in the Wikipedia webpage comes under Creative Commons Attribution -ShareAlike License which allows any one can share and adapt. But it is suggestable to read all the way and try to use our own understanding to express what we learned or what we are looking. Even if you used any related information, try to APA reference it for better understanding of the data and credibility of your work.

3. You are a medical researcher and you think you have discovered a new drug that cures lung cancer.  It worked well on mice although a few of them died of heart problems. You want to test it on people.  You recruit 100 lung cancer patients into your treatment programme. You don’t tell them about the new drug.  You treat 50 patients with usual drugs and 50 with the new drug to see which is better.

This is unethical from the perspective of a medical researcher since the researcher knew what are all the defectiveness because of this. At same time from the patients side it is related to moral because of that he researcher is not informed the patients about the defects. To avoid such situations it is essential to inform the patients about what is going to happen or what are all the defects of using the drugs which need to use. It is patient’s right to know and it is the responsibility of health assistants or hospital to make the patients know about it.

4. You are doing your PhD about drug abuse among students.  You interview 30 students about their drug use. You discover that one of the students is actually a fairly big time dealer and you report him to the police.

This is something related to moral. Even the interview is confidential as a part of your studies but morally it is best to consider the danger behind this and it would be appropriate to inform the responsible authorities to take action. Hence while doing such activities as a part of studies it is better to make agreements that does not violate any moral values. In this situation Privacy and Confidentiality terms violates as we inform the authorities but considering the moral side we cannot act like we should not inform.

5. You are a researcher looking at the effect of violent computer games on children.  You recruit 20 children into your study. Over a month you regularly show them images of violence to see if it has an adverse effect on their behaviour.  One of the children becomes quite distressed each time and so you stop showing her images and drop her from the study.

This is unethical, at the same no researchers are allowed to do something which cause harmful effects on the children. Doing research is not to harm anyone and thus the activities involved in the research should be also the same.

6. You want to research how easy it is to hack into your organisation’s computer system by persuading people to divulge login and password details.  You recruit a small team to ring up key people in the organisation and persuade them to give either their own or their boss’s details.

This can be considered both ethical as well as unethical. If the research is well based to find the security flaws in the system and if the team knew what they are doing and also if it is based on the legitimate permission from the organization side then it is ethical. At the same time none of the above criteria is considered while conducting such a research then it is definitely unethical.

7. You are doing an initial research in area of a town where may bars and pubs are located, to estimate the level of problematic social behaviour in the area. your research is independent from the police, because you want to observe their behaviour as well. You observe both abusive and violent behaviour.

This is related to both ethical and moral values. Doing research by observing others without their permission is unethical, but at the same time considering the moral values the outcome or the study result of this research will effect the society with new information which may help them to think again which may help to update themselves. It is better to keep boundaries to keep ourselves safe as well as others.