[RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN

BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

What is Research?

• To search again, to take another more careful look; to find out more.
• Searching for a theory, testing theory, or for solving a problem
• Research is a scientific and systematic process of finding solutions to a problem after a thorough
study and analysis of the situational systematic factors.

What is Human Research?

• Research involving humans, or impacting upon humans
• The use and/or collection of personal, collective, or cultural data from participants or
their records
1. Therapeutic research:
-conducted with the intent of providing a direct benefit to participants
2. Non-therapeutic research:
- conducted with the intent to derive knowledge (and not to be of direct
benefit to participants)

What is Ethics?
• Critical scrutiny of moral thought and morality as it affects our ideas of right conduct
• Ethics are the principles and guidelines that help us to uphold the things we value.

Why Adhere to Ethical Norms in Research?

• Promote the aims of research such as knowledge, truth, and avoidance of error.
• Promote the values that are essential to collaborative work, such as trust, accountability,
mutual respect, and fairness, guidelines for authorship, copyright and patenting policies, data
sharing policies, and confidentiality rules in peer review
• To ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public
• Promote moral and social values, such as social responsibility, human rights, animal welfare,
compliance with the law, and health and safety

Ethical Principles that Various Codes Address

Honesty

• Strive for honesty in all scientific communications, report data, results, methods and
procedures, and publication status.
• Do not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data.
• Do not deceive colleagues, granting agencies, or the public.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

Carefulness
• Avoid careless errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine your own work and the
work of your peers. Keep good records of research activities, such as data collection, research
design, and correspondence with agencies or journals.

Openness
• Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.

Respect for Intellectual Property

• Honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. Do not use unpublished
data, methods, or results without permission. Give credit where credit is due. Give proper
acknowledgement or credit for all contributions to research. Never plagiarize.

Confidentiality

• Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication,

personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient s’ records.

Responsible Publication

• Publish in order to advance research and scholarship, not to advance just your own career.
Avoid wasteful and duplicative publication.

Responsible Mentoring

• Help to educate, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to make
their own decisions.

Respect for colleagues

• Respect your colleagues and treat them fairly.

Competence

• Maintain and improve your own professional competence and expertise through lifelong
education and learning; take steps to promote competence in science as a whole.

Legality

• Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies.

Animal Care

• Show proper respect and care for animals when using them in research. Do not conduct
unnecessary or poorly designed animal experiments.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

Human Subjects Protection

• When conducting research on human subjects, minimize harms and risks and maximize
benefits; respect human dignity, privacy, and autonomy; take special precautions with
vulnerable populations; and strive to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly.

Unethical Research Practices

1. Publishing the same paper in two different journals without telling the editors
2. Submitting the same paper to different journals without telling the editors
3. Including a colleague as an author on a paper in return for a favor even though the colleague did
not make a serious contribution to the paper
4. Discussing with your colleagues confidential data from a paper that you are reviewing for a
journal
5. Trimming outliers from a data set without discussing your reasons in paper
6. Using an inappropriate statistical technique in order to enhance the significance of your
research
7. Conducting a review of the literature that fails to acknowledge the contributions of other people
in the field or relevant prior work
8. Giving the same research project to two graduate students in order to see who can do it the
fastest
9. Failing to maintain research data for a reasonable period of time
10. Making derogatory comments and personal attacks in your review of author's submission
11. Wasting animals in research
12. Exposing students and staff to biological risks in violation of your institution's biosafety rules
13. Rejecting a manuscript for publication without even reading it
14. Sabotaging someone's work
15. Stealing supplies, books, or data
16. Exact copying of the material without giving credit to the original author
17. Inappropriate paraphrasing
18. Using other people's words or data ("stealing" someone's property)
19. Not reporting contradictory observations you made.
- the results of repetition of an experiment may be different from the original results because of
chance or because of some critical change, even a small one, in the procedures.
20. Putting your name on work you didn't do.
21. Not reporting others' related or contradictory work.
• Failing to cite the work of others, work that is related and complementary to your own, is, as
Garfield points out, bad form; it's depriving others of their reward.
• More important to the progress of science is the failure to cite work that is contradictory
22. Changing the hypothesis for the paper.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

23. Failing to report negative results

24. Publishing the same results many times.
• publishing exactly the same paper in two different journals
• publication in a journal and then in multiple review articles of identical data
25. Concluding "cause and effect" when only "correlation" is demonstrated.
26. Writing an abstract with no data.
27. “Salami" series of articles in which the data are published piecemeal instead of all together.
• Publishing the report of a project on an installment plan, reporting the results of a small
group of subjects, then, those of a larger group and finally the entire study.
• Parceling the study into small units and then publish each small part as a separate paper.
28. Every author whose name will appear on a published paper has the right and the
responsibility to review the paper before it is submitted
29. All authors should agree completely with everything in the paper. Anyone who has not done all
of these, should not appear in the author list.
30. Same results/study should not be submitted/ published in more than one place
• Dual publication: in more than one place
• Partial publication: parts of a single study as if they were separate studies
31. Portions of one publication should not be reprinted in another without permission
• Copyright laws are in effect
32. Authorship—inclusion and order should be based on contribution

Violations in the Preparation of Research Report

The key ethical issues involved in preparing the research report include:
• deciding who should receive authorship for the study
• insuring that plagiarism does not occur when writing the research report

What Constitute Plagiarism and How to Give Credits to Other Person when you Use His or Her Work

Plagiarism occurs when you have copied someone else's work and have not given them credit for
that work. Credit is given to another person by can putting their work in quotation marks or
indenting the quoted material and then giving a citation for the material you have quoted.

Causes of Misconduct
1. “Bad apple" Theory

• Most scientists are highly ethical.

• Only researchers who are morally corrupt, economically desperate, or psychologically
disturbed commit misconduct.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

• Only a fool would commit misconduct because science's peer review system and self-
correcting mechanisms will eventually catch those who try to cheat the system.

2. “Stressful" or "imperfect" environment theory

• Misconduct occurs because various institutional pressures, incentives, and constraints
encourage people to commit misconduct, such as pressures to publish or obtain grants or
contracts, career ambitions, the pursuit of profit or fame
• Defenders of the stressful environment theory point out that science's peer review system is
far from perfect and that it is relatively easy to cheat the system. Erroneous or fraudulent
research often enters the public record without being detected for years.

Recommendation

Policy

• Universities need to have clear, well publicized policies on plagiarism and other research
practices. This policies need to do more than say “don not plagiarize”. They need to explain
what plagiarism and other ethical considerations means with examples of correct and in correct
citation.

Kinds of Plagiarism

1. Word for word Plagiarism – the source text is copied in verbatim

Example:

Original

…to be a critical pedagogies is to seriously take on this daunting challenge in the face of a social system
that has historically has been constructed at least in educational terms, around a social efficiency
ideology (Kanpol, 1997).

Plagiarized

To be a critical pedagogies is to seriously take on this daunting challenge in the face of a social system
that has historically has been constructed at least in educational terms, around a social efficiency
ideology.

2. Paraphrase Plagiarism – This is committed when the source text is not truly paraphrased. The
original sentence structure of the source text is retained with very minimal change done through a
substitution of synonyms.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

Example:

Original

…to be a critical pedagogist is to seriously take on this daunting challenge in the face of a social system
that has historically has been conducted at least in educational terms, around a social efficiency ideology
(Kanpol, 1997).

Plagiarized

To be a critical teacher is to seriously take on this threatening challenge in the face of a social scheme
that has traditionally been created at least in pedagogical terms, around a social efficiency ideology
(Kanpol, 1997).

3. Mosaic Plagiarism - This is commited when various phrases from different sources are lifted and are
just placed together.

Example:

Original

A. Freire’s (1970, 1973) method, which worked well for the underclass, can be adopted on any personal
level, if the aim is to understand how social experience is constructed and ultimately how we as social
actors are part of the oppressive social structure. Presently, one way that critical pedagogist help define
struggle is through the understanding of narrative.

B. Freire’s basic assumptions were that oppressed people could challenge their life form by
understanding the structural constraints that originally set them as unequal members of society.

C. Freire’s pedagogy was overtly political, summoning peasants to rise against social justices.

Plagiarized

Freire’s (1970, 1973) method, which worked well for the underclass, can be adopted on any personal
level. The assumptions were that oppressed people could challenge their life form by understanding the
structural constraints that originally set them as unequal members of society, summoning peasants to
rise against social justices.

4. Source Plagiarism – This is committed when a researcher “use a material that has been quoted by
another author, but you cite only the original source even if it were the latter source you took the quote
from” (Manlapaz et al., 2005).
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

Example:

Good paraphrase (You found the citation from Desepida (2005), your quaotation shall appear)

Desepida (2005) cites Paddocks (1958) who claimed that the process of interpretation must be
examined to fully understand the communication process.

Plagiarized

Paddocks (1958) who claimed that the process of interpretation must be examined to fully understand
the communication process.

(Here it apperas that the writer has actually read Paddock though it was Desepida which was actually
read.)

5. Incomplete Citation Plagiarism – This is committed when only a part of a source text is quoted while
the rest is projected as if it is written by the researcher but is still coming from the source text.

Example:

Source Text

Family gatherings and reunions ranked first among the secong- ranked Filipino cultural values still
cherished by Fil-Am families. 21 respondents or 26.9% ranked this value as second among the Filipino
cultural values they still cherish and practice (Felinore Angelica H. Valera. (2007). Factors affecting the
practice and non-practice of Filipino cultural values by Filipino- American families. The journal
education. Volume 1. May 2007.

Good Paraphrase

Valera (2007) posits that family reunions remain significantly important among Fil-Am families. In fact, it
ranks second in a astudy she conducted.

Plagiarized

Family reunion remains significantly important among Fil-American families(valera, 2007). It must be
nited that these people cherish and practice. Filipino values such as this.

5. Ghost sources- Text that is properly cited but there is no actual source. Text is properly cited but
actually comes from a different source.

6. Self- Plagiarism – Directly copying own works that are already submitted to a specific subject or
journal.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

Weaknesses in Research

1. Some research titles are either too broad, not very clear, or do not reflect the main theme of
the proposed study
2. The problem is not clearly defined and the importance of the study is not clearly stated.
3. Objectives are not consistent or related to the title, too ambitious, and unmanageable.
4. Review of Related Literature merely enumerates the findings of previous studies without
necessarily synthesizing the relationship of relevant issues related to the problem.
5. Frameworks do not clearly discuss the relationship of variables to be studied.
6. Failure of some studies to identify the sample size, the respondents or the criteria to be used in
selecting the samples.
7. Many research reports merely describe the findings of the study without providing an in-depth
analysis of various issues. Further there are reports which do not provide answers to the
objectives as proposed.
8. The reports do not adequately provide policy implications or recommendations.
9. Recommendations are not based from the major findings; too general; not
doable/realistic.
10. In general, students are not following the designated format; sentences are hanging, disjointed,
and choppy; and paragraphs are lacking in flow and without a sense of emphasis.

Choppy Sentences

Problem

Too many short simple sentences can make your writing appear unsophisticated and your ideas seem
disconnected.

Solution

SHOW LOGICAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN IDEAS by

Combining sentences with conjunctions: and, but, or, nor, yet, for, so

Linking sentences through subordinations: after, although, as, as if, because, before, even if, even
though, if, if only, rather than, since, that, though, unless, until, when, where, whereas, wherever,
whether, which, while

Choppy: She took dance classes. She had no natural grace or sense of rhythm. She eventually gave up
the idea of becoming a dancer.

Revised: She took dance classes, but she had no natural grace or sense of rhythm, so she eventually
gave up the idea of becoming a dancer.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

Choppy: The Philippines has been highly dependent on foreign oil for many years. Alternate sources of
energy are only now being sought.

Revised: Although the Philippines has been highly dependent on foreign oil for many years, alternate
sources are now being sought.

Helpful Hints

1. Develop a keen eye for the kind of hard-to-see pitfalls in technical writing.
2. Avoid big words. "Send" is simpler than "dispatch" or "forward". (Also, "forward" more correctly
implies "relaying".) Stick with "use" and avoid "utilize" . . . it's pretentious.
3. Use short words, sentences and paragraphs. They're easier to read and don't scare off your
reader.
4. Sentences are ideal at 17 or 18 words. If paragraphs exceed 8 lines, find logical places to break
them into shorter units.
5. Avoid jargon or complex terms. Write to be understood, not to impress.
• In business, we might say: "We need to increase our batting average" - a baseball term. This can
mean that we need to increase the percentage of the time we succeed (close sales, etc.).
6. "Bang for the Buck"
• Giving your customers the best bang for the buck means you're delivering an excellent product
for the amount they spend. It could also mean that your business is getting the most for your
money by buying your materials from one vendor over another.
7. Avoid jargon or complex terms. Write to be understood, not to impress.
• In business, we might say: "We need to increase our batting average" - a baseball term. This can
mean that we need to increase the percentage of the time we succeed (close sales, etc.).

8. "Bang for the Buck"

• Giving your customers the best bang for the buck means you're delivering an excellent product
for the amount they spend. It could also mean that your business is getting the most for your
money by buying your materials from one vendor over another.
9. Don't pad your sentences.

Examples: instead of "maintain files on a current basis", use keep files current;

Replace "examinations are made for the purpose of determining" with” examinations
determine”; and

Change "the majority of our projects are of a temporary nature" to ” most of our projects are
temporary”.
 [RESEARCH ETHICS, PLAGIARISM, AND WEAKNESSES IN
BA 203 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH]

• Here are examples of pretentious words or phrases and their simple counterparts:

Instead of: Use:

in connection with about

be in a position to be able to
as a result of because of
in the event that if
for the reason that because
make a decision decide
due to the fact that since
in order to to
in the month of May in May
by means of by
it is our understanding we know
with respect to about
in view of the fact that since
for the purpose of for
at this point in time now
held a meeting met
during the time that while/ when
utilize use

REFERENCES:

Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2011). Ethics in Business Research. Oxford University Press..Business Research
Methods, 3rd edition.

Gochuico, (2020). Creating a research space strategies in writing.

Valerio, A.T. (June 2018). Research Ethics (Business Research Techniques)