STAT1201/STAT1301 Ethics Review Essay Guidelines The goal of the ethics review is for you to demonstrate your grasp of some of the ethical issues and challenges involved in scientific studies that were covered in the ethics lectures, workshops and web learning content, and for you to demonstrate your ability to write clearly, precisely and concisely. The maximum essay size is 500 words, excepting only bibliographic content (citations and bibliography). Your word count will be checked automatically and you will be penalized or failed if your essay is too long. We understand that for many of you this will be the first essay with ethical analysis that you have written. Given this, we have endeavored to make the requirements for this essay and the marking criteria as clear as possible. It is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with these criteria and requirements and to submit an essay that meets the stated standards. If you are unsure about any of the criteria and requirements then it is essential for you to identify the problems before your workshops and to ask questions then to clarify the matter .. Difficult ethical issues most commonly arise in experimental research involving human or animal subjects to research articles involving them are the most obvious to choose to review. Note that you should not use retrospective studies (re-analysing existing data) or meta-analyses (studies which only collate and analyse the data from other studies). The ethical issues with these have not been covered in the course and using them will typically lead to confusion and a poor review. Essay Topic Your task is to write a philosophical ethical review about the most interesting or pressing ethical matters relating to your chosen article. Your essay should answer one or more of the following questions about the scientific article you have chosen as the subject of your review assessment items: Q1. Are there any specific ethical issues raised by this particular study? If so, briefly describe one or two of them and what you think is the right response to them. (For example the study might relate to chemical or biological weapons, abortion, genetic engineering, cloning or some other significant ethical issue, or the study might have been designed or conducted incompetently or unethically). Q2. Are there human experimental subjects in the study? Was the experimentation upon them ethical? Can you tell whether they gave informed consent to their participation in the study and was such consent sufficient? Give reasons for your answer. Q3. Were there animals used in the study? Can you tell whether they were treated humanely? If they suffered at all or died do you think the benefits of the study were sufficient to justify their use? Give reasons for your answer. Q4. What incentives, if any, might the researcher(s) who conducted this particular study have had to falsify or manipulate their results? If the researcher(s) conducting this particular study had chosen to falsify, manipulate and/or misrepresent their data, explain briefly the methods of manipulating the experimental