Understanding Issues of ‘Truth’ and Integrity in Doctoral Research

Abstract

It may be assumed that doctoral research that is conducted for the purposes of writing fiction, or the ‘untrue’ story of made-up characters, may not involve the issues that are conventionally associated with researching and publishing ‘true’ information about ‘participants’. I would agree with Finlayson (“Faking it: The ethics of transforming real life into fiction.” In Ethical Imaginings. Refereed Conference Proceedings of the 16th AAWP Conference, 2011, 2011) and Brien (“True crime fiction as criminal history.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 13 (2): 133–144, 2009), however, that this is not the case, even though the project may be deemed ‘low risk’ in terms of formal ethics approval. In the case of researching and writing fiction, the attendant issues are simply different from those associated with research conducted for non-fictional products. The possible identifiability of participants is not as problematic when the published story is fictional, for example, but the possibility that participants may feel exploited is powerfully evident in such a project where the researcher may be seen to be taking someone else’s story and making it their own. This chapter suggests that the basic tenets of the ethical conduct of research, that is, respect for human beings, research merit and integrity, justice and beneficence, remain relevant to all research, even when the end product is based on the imagination.