ABSTRACT
The author's experiences of the complex realities of ethical decision-making in the field have been mainly through the supervision of students and participation on ethics committees generally ignorant about covert research. One aspect of any research ethics, reflecting responsible conduct of research, embodies the researchers' obligation to report that the research was conducted without fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, that an adequate paper-trail was maintained in line with the topics designated as central by the Office of Research Integrity in the United States of America (USA). By contrast, when another of author students used modified participant observation techniques to address the recent past of a cricket team, additional issues appeared, even though the subjects were informed that she was a researcher. Indeed, when the concern is with the ethical obligations of the researcher, prudential obligations, such as the legal obligations to data protection, are implicitly set aside. Typically, the ethical imperative here will be more stringent than the legal one.
