ABSTRACT
Ethics and concern for the participant may often conflict with the goal of science to be unbiased and to ensure results are not by prior knowledge. After the research began, a new drug, penicillin, was found to be an effective treatment for the disease; however, it was not provided to the participants—a clear violation of the ethics codes. The Helsinki Declaration, signed in 1964, was the first international agreement regulating human research officially endorsed by the medical profession. Procedures for protecting student groups is a part of the review process of the Institutional Review Boards and not simply left up to the researcher to implement. The Belmont Report specifically enumerated that a person upon whom research is being performed must be protected from both psychological and physical harm. One of social work’s most important values is social justice, and the justice principle is a cornerstone of research as well.
