Scarce Code Of Ethics Essay

The controversy surrounding Scarce’s research involving the animal rights group, Animal Liberation Front—a radical environmental movement that raided Washington State University’s animal lab—set off a firestorm and eventual legal battle about the issue of confidentiality in research. It as well highlighted the power of the power of the state, and the inadequate power of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Code of Ethics. According to the ASA’s Code of Ethics, “sociologists have an obligation to ensure that confidential information is protected” (1999). However, from the perspective of the law, data collected during research that then becomes relevant to a case concerning criminal activity, must be provided by law if requested by a

Scarce, in his efforts to not bypass the Code of Ethics’ language on the rules pertaining to confidentiality, struggled to combat the legal system, and ultimately lost, and was forced to spend months in jail. In his paper, Scarce claimed that because of insufficient sets of rules to enable researchers to adhere to the Code of Ethics in terms of protecting the confidentiality of research participants, and due to the fact that government institutions have authority to seize via subpoena data gathered from any study, that both the latter and the former jeopardizes and questions how sociologists practice research ethically, all while making certain the protection of themselves, including the confidentiality of human subjects. The Code of Ethics, Scares’ dilemma, including the chance that other organizations outside of the government can take advantage of the limited legal protection of sociologists, points to the relevance for the need for researchers to realize the potential legal ramifications of conducting sociological research. Ethnographic, interview, participant observation methods assume the greatest risk in the current structure of the legal system of the United States