Ethics

Viewpoints

Discoveries and Ethics
By Nathaniel Lesch-Huie

Much of what we know and do is taught. The way we communicate and go about our daily lives is instilled by greater forces than us like our parents, societal norms, and the educational system. People are trained to behave in appropriate contexts and to follow norms and they are almost always rewarded for this good behavior. There is also another type of people, these are people that respect and see the lines laid out for them but choose to step beyond them for the sake of discovery and learning. At least in the field of Sociology and Psychology there was a time when people were rewarded for their efforts to elicit new learning and go beyond what was deemed academically appropriate. Scholars like Freud and Zimbardo were able to produce many great discoveries about humans by just acting on their instinct and letting their gut guide them. Research today is very difficult to complete while maintaining your original goals and ideas because so many regulations, restrictions, and ethical guidelines keep the researcher from being able to act spontaneously which forces them to rework or condense their original ideas to fit within the terms of acceptability, timelines, and ASA approval.

Perhaps one of the most annoying terms in academics is ethics. While on one side ethics is great because it allows you to see that you do have the ability to affect people in an unnatural, unhealthy, or inhumane way, the other side is that every time you try to do something progressive someone slams you with, that’s not ethical. Sudhir Venkatesh a Professor at Columbia University is somebody who has pushed the envelope of what is acceptable and still managed to remain respected by his peers. Sudhir spent a lot of time living with and studying the trade and people of the crack industry in Chicago. Many people would immediately blow off the results or findings of his work because of the contexts in which it happened but the fact remains that he allowed himself to penetrate into a world which is otherwise impenetrable and gain real insights and information. In an article written in Newsweek online (2/1/08) about Sudhir even he himself recalls that he knew it would be controversial and there would be unpleasant situations but that was just part of the process.

The point for me is that learning should not be so much about how it is done but more that it gets done. Let’s not look for the faults but let’s look at what’s there. If we spend our whole time planning, checking, and making sure our work is academically acceptable we will never actually be able to do the real work. I have always had the attitude that there is no time like the present so if we let an idea or opportunity pass us by then we might not be able to recover or perform it in its true and original form. Academia, scholars, and associations are only good in the fact that they give us some parameters to understand our subject but if we let those parameters control us so much that we are not able to produce anymore then we must break free. There comes a time where we must let ourselves be ourselves and follow the methods that we feel are necessary. Later when we have performed our tasks then we can make the information public but we should not be expecting to be appreciated for it but more we should find happiness in the fact that the work is done and the process complete.

References

Notes from The Crack Trade, By Jessica Bennett (Feb 1, 2008). www.newsweek.com. Retrieved March 28, 2008.

mwalsh @ April 10, 2008