Seminar 4 Flashcards
What is the distinction between normative and descriptive statements? Mark all correct options.
a) Descriptive statements are true/false independently of what we believe/have reasons to believe, whereas normative statements cannot be true/false independently of what we value (or some theory of value).
b) Descriptive statements never include a “should”, whereas normative statements always do.
c) Descriptive statements do not include an “ought”, whereas normative statements always do.
d) Descriptive statements describe purported facts, whereas normative statements make prescriptions or evaluate something.
Answer: a), d)
What characterises consequentialism as a moral theory? Mark all correct options.
a) An action is right if and only if it produces the best consequences.
b) Actions can never be good.
c) Consequences are always good when they are effects of actions.
d) Actions are always good.
e) An action is right if it has a consequence.
Answer: a)
Which of the following statements characterize deontology? Mark all correct options.
a) It is important to strike an even balance between good and bad actions.
b) The only right a person can have is her self-ownership.
c) What makes a choice right is its conformity with a moral rule.
d) Some actions are wrong (or right) regardless of their consequences.
e) It is a duty to use people as a means to an end.
Answer: c), d)
Which of the statements below expresses a hallmark component of virtue ethics? Mark the correct option.
a) Morality is about being a good person. This, in turn, is determined on the basis of character traits.
b) Virtue ethics primarily serves to inform us of which actions are right.
c) Calculating the utility of actions is central to virtue ethics.
d) Only human rights are morally significant.
Answer: a)
In all of the following examples, a decision has to be made. In which of them could the precautionary principle be a suitable principle to apply (and utilized as risk management)?
a) When a country deliberates whether to declare war on another country, there are all kinds of risks involved. Military planners might anticipate some of the risks involved, and maybe even some of the risks’ probabilities. However, the global complexity of such a decision makes it impossible to anticipate everything.
b) In order to handle people’s money digitally, banks have to spend considerable time developing safe programs to prevent hackers from theft. When a bank judges that a new program is sufficiently secure, they could either be wrong (resulting in the bank being hacked and people loosing their money) or be right (resulting in a safe bank for at least some period of time).
c) To choose between performing action A or not, one person is considering playing Russian roulette in order to decide. That is, a shot fired is interpreted as “act according to A”, while no shot is interpreted as “refrain from action A”.
d) A train planner has a choice of either giving two trains the same starting time, or giving them different starting times. Given that the two trains start at the same time, accelerate with the same velocity, and maintain a constant speed after the acceleration, they will collide at a certain position P, because the distance between the trains’ starting points and P is the same for both trains.
Answer: a)
How does the model of the statistical-expected value work? Mark all correct options.
a) A precondition for the statistical-expected value model to be applicable is that risk is defined quantitatively.
b) The statistical-expected value model utilizes a qualitative understanding of the notion of risk.
c) Given an action A with probabilistic outcomes O1…,On, whose respective severity S each could be quantified as a value V, the statistical-expected value is: SEV of A = So1 * P(O1) + So2 * P(O2),…,Son * P(On).
Answer: a), c)
Why might gift authorship be considered a bad practice? Mark all correct options.
a) Gift authorship inflates the credentials of the added authors.
b) Gift authorship dilutes the credit that is owed to the people who actually did the work.
c) Gift authorship increases the number of authors of a paper.
d) Gift authorship makes it more difficult to tell which individuals should receive credit and which should not be credited for the work.
Answer: a), b), d)
Consider the following case. Julia is a researcher whose current task is to both set up and make a risk assessment of an upcoming chemical laboratory experiment she and her coworkers are about to perform. It is widely known that some of the chemicals might be dangerous to blend, but such a mix is necessary in order to carry out their experiment. However, through mathematical modelling Julia is able to simulate that if blended with enough care, the chemical mixture should not be harmful. Unfortunately, due to inaccurate and clumsy laboratory equipment a slight overdose of one chemical made the blend toxic and one of the researchers was severely injured.
Which of the following are ways how each respective normative framework could judge whether Julia acted morally justified?
a) Assuming that Julia was the one mixing the blend, she clearly acted morally wrong since the consequences were that someone was severely injured.
b) As a researcher, Julia acted with precaution, care for her coworkers, and scientific rigor. Julia has thus acted in accordance with relevant virtues and cannot be said to have acted morally unjustified.
c) Since it is unclear whether any action of Julia caused the harm, we cannot argue that Julia has breached any duties and therefore acted morally unjustified.
d) Since the other researcher was injured, she was used as a means to an end. Therefore, Julia violated a fundamental duty.
e) Since the injury was very unlikely, Julia acted morally justified when looking at it from the actualist approach.
Answer: a), b), c)
Which of the following are examples of plagiarism? Mark all correct options.
a) Including a really good idea that you got from another author in your own text, using your own words, without indicating that it was originally the other author’s idea.
b) Quoting another author in your own text without using the APA referencing style.
c) Copying a sentence of 12 words from another author into your own text without indicating it as a quotation.
d) Copying a whole 120-word paragraph from another author into your own text without indicating it as a quotation.
e) Including a 15-word standard mathematical definition in your own text without indicating the origin of it.
Answer: a), c), d)
What is true about subjective views on risk? Mark all correct options.
a) An agent may view the outcomes of a risky action as more or less severe depending on factors such as her freedom to choose or avoid that action.
b) There is consensus among experts that subjective notions of risk should play no role in risk evaluations.
c) There is no way to quantify subjective probabilities.
d) For any risky action, the average of everyone’s subjective evaluation of the risk is the same as the objective evaluation of the risk.
Answer: a)
How does the requirement of informed consent work with methodological considerations in experiments with human participants? Mark all correct options.
a) Giving the participants all information about the study might lower the internal validity.
b) If the researchers are informed about the purpose of the study, then they cannot be blinded.
c) If the experiment doesn’t fulfill informed consent, then it cannot be internally valid.
d) A subject that isn’t decision-capacitated might not have the ability to evaluate and problematize the purpose of the study and the personal consequences of participating.
Answer: a), d)
In this course, you learn about three ethical frameworks. In what way are they important for research ethics? Mark all correct options.
a) We show that deontology is the right theory by pointing out the flaws of the two other theories.
b) None of the theories can be universally and uncontroversially applied to all moral questions, but taken together, we can often use one theory where another falls short.
c) While consequentialism is the only theory used today, the two other theories have their place in the historical development of research ethics.
d) All three theories are useful when analyzing the range of research-ethical problems.
Answer: b), d)
