Abstract
Two key challenges haunt ethics teaching: relevance and universalism. Demands for relevance, whether relevance is judged based upon association to a local standard (e.g., national professional association code) or to the specific demands of a professional workplace, pull the teaching and study of ethics towards the particular. Calls for a global standard pull ethics teaching and scholarship toward high level principles that can be difficult to justify at a level students and grants funding agencies find applicable. Particularity and specificity complicate demands for global standards or universal norms, while exposition at a universalized level frustrate application in a relevant context. This chapter investigates the structure of research ethics as exemplified in the Singapore Statement, then turns to a case study of RCR students in Hong Kong to provide an example of RCR receptivity among students in engineering and other fields.
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Notes
- 1.
Although other regulatory regimes may also be relevant, U.S. regulations play an important role in higher education across borders. The policies regarding research integrity found in the US Federal Wide Assurance, for instance, tends towards a globalization of U.S. regulations in the area of research.
- 2.
For a fuller discussion, see Jordan with Gray (2013).
- 3.
This research was funded in part by a grant from the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Hong Kong.
- 4.
The Human Subjects Ethics Committee for Non-Clinical Faculties of the University of Hong Kong approved this project under an expedited review with a waiver of documentation of written informed consent. The full survey instrument is reprinted in Gray and Jordan 2012: 309–310.
- 5.
- 6.
For an examination of different cultural norms as they influence professional ethics – in this case, the civil service – cf. Jordan and Gray 2011.
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Jordan, S.R., Gray, P.W. (2015). Responsible Conduct of Research Training for Engineers: Adopting Research Ethics Training for Engineering Graduate Students. In: Murphy, C., Gardoni, P., Bashir, H., Harris, Jr., C., Masad, E. (eds) Engineering Ethics for a Globalized World. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18260-5_13
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