Second, the term ethics or moralityis used to mean the standards for ethical or moral behavior of a particular group, such as "Buddhist ethics" or "nursing ethics" or "Roman Catholic morality" or "the professional ethics of engineers in the twentieth century United States." When one gives a description of such ethical codes and standards one is doing descriptive ethics, and not necessarily subscribing to the moral evaluations given by the group in question.

Third, some authors even use the term "ethics" or "morality" more loosely to mean any code of behavior, even one that does not claim to have moral justification. For example, Robert Jackall in Moral Mazes describes what he calls a corporation's "ethics" or "morality" and takes it to include such judgments as "What is right is what the guy above you wants from you."(p. 6) Such a judgment is about the best (i.e., most effective) way to survive in the organization, but does not pretend to be a statement about what is morally/ethically justified. It is important to examine such codes of behavior and see how they affect the opportunities for moral action, but not every code of behavior is claimed to have moral/ethical justification.

Some philosophers and theologians have drawn a distinction between the moral and the ethical. They have drawn such a variety of different distinctions, however, that to use any one of them invites confusion with the others. (Therefore the terms "ethical" and "moral" are used interchangeably here.)

Evaluation*. Normative evaluation is a judgment as to whether something is good or bad in some respects, a value judgment; evaluation of the results is assessment of what test results indicate about some natural phenomena, or about the performance of some human artifact.

Explanation*. Explanations of human actions typically make reference to the agent's reasons or motive for some action. For example, Chris went to the bookstore to buy a text book. Causes are usually cited only for human actions that are not intentional, such as falling. A person's falling might be causally explained by the slipperiness of the road surface, the person having been pushed, or drugged, or having a heart attack. A person's falling with acceleration a would be explained in terms of the gravitational field in which the person was falling. Notice that in certain contexts, notably ordinary life and law, it is often the unusual that is explained, but scientific explanation is usually explanation of typical behavior.

F

Falsification*. In research ethics the term "falsification" means changing or misrepresenting data or experiments, or misrepresenting other significant matters, such as the credentials of an investigator in a research proposal. Unlike fabrication distinguishing falsification of data from legitimate data selection takes judgment and an understanding of statistical methods.

FDA. Food and Drug Administration.

Food and Drug Administration. FDA.

Fraud*. A fraud is an intentional deception perpetrated to secure an unfair gain. Financial fraud, that is, a deception practiced on another party to cheat them out of money, is the most commonly discussed type of fraud. The term "research fraud" or "scientific fraud" is also used to mean an intentional deception about scientific results, a type of research misconduct. In this case there is no financial transaction, there need not be a financial transaction to obtain a financial benefit which the perpetrator receives, and there need not be an injured party.

It is useful to sort out the characteristics of a fraudulent act. For this it is instructive to look at the legal definition. In a civil law suit charging fraud there is a plaintiff who brings the charge against a defendant. To win the suit the plaintiff must prove five points

• the defendant made a false representation
• the defendant knew that the representation was false or at least recklessly disregarded whether it was true or false.
• there was intent to induce belief in the misrepresentation
• the plaintiff had a reasonable belief in the misrepresentation
• the plaintiff suffered damage as a result.

G

Good*. The good is what it is rational to want. Therefore a good knife is one that has characteristics that are rational to want in a device with one blade used for cutting. When one considers what makes a good person, or good character, the matter becomes more complex, because it then becomes important to ask whether the traits under discussion are those that people would want in themselves, or those that they would want in others, and whether those are the same, or in what sort of society those would be the same.

H

HHS. Department of Health and Human Services.

I

IACUC. Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. That committee in a research institution charged with reviewing animal welfare issues in and approving all research involving use of animal subjects.

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. IACUC. That committee in a research institution charged with reviewing animal welfare issues in and approving all research involving use of animal subjects.

Instutional Review Board. IRB. That committee in a research institution charged with reviewing and approving all research involving human subjects.

IRB. Instutional Review Board. That committee in a research institution charged with reviewing and approving all research involving human subjects.

K

L

Liability*. Any sort of legal obligation, including, for example, the obligation of a corporation to pay wages or taxes. The liabilities most often discussed in this Ethics Center are those to compensate for injury or to clean up toxic contamination. Legal liability to compensate for an injury or to clean up contamination does not necessarily require that one have caused the injury or contamination, or that one is guilty in a moral sense. Under the doctrine of strict liability a party may be liable without having been guilty of negligence, for example.

M

Moral agent*. A being whose actions are capable of moral evaluation. We may say that an avalanche killed three people, but the avalanche is not open to moral evaluation. The avalanche is an amoral force. A competent and reasonably mature human being is the most familiar example of a moral agent. In contrast, most so-called "lower" (that is, non-human) animals are generally understood to be amoral (although this is open to debate regarding species that have complex and flexible social relations, like primates and dolphins.)

Moral integrity*. Moral integrity is a complex and subtle ethical notion. As theologian Stanley Hauerwas has argued, it is central to all the other virtues but more fundamental than any single virtue. The root of the term integrity is wholeness. Moral wholeness rather than rigidity best captures the idea of moral integrity. For example, a person might discover that some long-held ethical belief, attitude or rule of conduct was mistaken because the person came to see that it was incompatible with other, more fundamental ethical commitments.

A person's moral integrity is central to a person's sense of meaning. Philosophers like John Ladd have argued that a person's moral integrity is a central aspect of that person's well-being. Therefore, leading another person to compromise her moral integrity is a fundamental injury to that person.

Some professional codes of ethics uphold the right of a member to refuse work that would compromise that person's ethical commitments even if the act in question (say, performing an abortion or developing weapons systems) is something that the profession as a whole has not ruled morally objectionable. This is a concern for the moral integrity of the members. It should be distinguished from respecting another's right of self-determination. Respecting another person's right of self-determination is done without regard for the motives of the person in exercising her right. She could be acting on whim or on moral conviction, for example. Concern for a person's moral integrity is a concern to support that person's actions in ways that are consistent with what her moral convictions and commitments, or at least to counter any attempt to force her to act otherwise.

Moral standing*. A being's moral standing determines the extent to which its well-being must be ethically considered for its own sake. To say that some group of beings have moral standing is to say that, as a moral matter, their well-being must be given some consideration. It does not decide the question of whether they have the same moral standing as people (and thus have "human" rights). The welfare of such beings, for example cattle, might be considered for prudential reasons, too, but that would not require that they have moral standing. For example one might judge that it would be important to feed one's cattle, just as one might decide it was stupid to throw one's stamp collection into the river, thinking of the stamps or cattle as an investment without believing that either the cattle or the stamps deserve better treatment. In that case one would not be considering the moral standing of the cattle.

Motive*. A motive is that which moves a person to action. Typically these are emotions, desires or concerns. So people say such things as, "The motive for the crime was revenge." However, it is often common to hear someone speak simply of the intended result as "the motive." For example, any of the following sentences might be used to convey the same thought:

"Lee's motive in arising early was to avoid traffic." "Lee arose early to avoid traffic." "Lee arose early because he wanted to avoid traffic."

The expressions "mixed motives" is used most often to suggest, not just any combination off emotions, desires, and concerns but more specifically a mixture of selfish and altruistic concerns.

N

Negligence*. Failure to be sufficiently careful in a matter in which one has a moral responsibility to exercise care is negligence. Some careless mistakes are negligent, as when a surgeon sews up a patient with surgical instruments inside. Others are not, as when one dribbles soup down the front of one's sweater.

A private or civil wrong or injury is called a tort, the prosecution of which tries to recover for a loss caused by someone's failure to fulfill a recognized duty owed to another, or by acting with less care than a reasonably prudent person would do under the same circumstances.

NIH. National Institutes of Health.

Normative*. When something, such as a standard or a judgment or evaluation, is normative, it concerns respects in which something is good or bad. Therefore, value judgments are normative, but the judgment that X is greener, or heavier, than Y is not. A standard of excellence is normative, in this sense, but a standard of measurement or a statistical norm is not.

"Normative" is sometimes used more broadly to mean that which establishes or reflects any sort of standard or norm, even a statistical one. Such usage is not common in discussions of ethics, however, and will not be found in the materials of this Center. This second sense of "normative"makes it a close synonym for "prescriptive," that which "makes or gives rules." Rules need not be normative in the sense in which we use it; rules may only establish order. For example, the statement "Put out your trash for collection on Tuesdays" is a prescription about when to put out trash, but does not suggest or establish that there is anything in Tuesday trash collection that is superior to collection on some other day.)

O

A legal obligation is a legal requirement that specifies what types of actions are permitted, forbidden, or required on legal grounds. Often legal obligations are monetary debts. When we speak of an obligation without specifying its nature we will mean a moral obligation.

Office of Regulatory Affairs. The office that investigates allegations of misconduct in regulated research monitored by the FDA. It focusses on testing and evaluating human and animal drugs, good and feed additives, and human biological products and medical devices. The jurisdiction of the ORI and this office may overlap if research is supported by PHS grants.

Official responsibility. The responsibility that one is assigned as a result of one's job or office. Of course, official responsibilities might require one to behave unethically--"it was my job" is not a valid excuse for immoral behavior. However, even when the requirements of an official responsibility are ethically acceptable, the concept of an official responsibility functions differently from moral responsibility. Official responsibility resembles moral responsibility in generating prescriptions for conduct--duties, or at least statements about what someone "ought" to do. As philosopher John Ladd points out, moral and official responsibility differ in at least two respects: First, official responsibilities are exclusionary--if one person has a particular official responsibility, another person does not (unless, of course, it was part of the job description of both). Second, official responsibilities, together with whatever rights, duties and requirements for accountability attend them, are all alienable (see rights)--they can be given to or taken over by someone else. In contrast, if one has a moral responsibility to inform the public about some matter, then even if one is in the position to delegate that responsibility to someone else, one still must see that the responsibility is fulfilled, because one does not get rid of a moral responsibility by giving it to someone else.

OPRR. Office for the Protection from Research Risks. An arm of the NIH responsible for responding to allegations of misuse of human and animal subjects in research support by HHS. Allegations in this area involve improper care of research animals, the failure to obtain informed consent from human subjects, mistreatment of human and animal subjects in research, and the failure to get approval from an institutional review board or animal care committee.

ORI. Office of Research Integrity. The entity that handles allegations of scientific misconduct that involve HHS-supported research and that fit within the definition: "Scientific misconduct or misconduct in science means fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and other practices that seriously deviate from commonly accepted practices within the scientific community for proposing, conducting, and reporting research. It does not include honest error or honest diferences in interpretations or judgments of data."

P

PHS. Public Health Service.

Plagiarism*. To appropriate the writings, graphic representations or ideas of another person and represent them as one's own, (that is, without proper attribution). Plagiarism is a form of intellectual property violation.

Plaintiff*. Injured party suing to be compensated for an injury or loss.

Prejudice*. Bias for or against someone or something that fails to take true account of their characteristics.

Principal*. A principal in an engineering firm (or other company) is a co-owner, that is, a partner or stock holder.

Privacy*. It is common to distinguish three species of privacy: physical, informational, and decisional. In addition, philosopher and legal theorist Anita Allen distinguishes dispositional privacy. Physical privacy is a restriction on the ability of others to experience a person through one or more of the five senses; informational privacy is a restriction on facts about the person that are unknown or unknowable; and decisional privacy is the exclusion of others from decisions, such as health care decisions or marital decisions, made by the person and his group of intimates. Finally, dispositional privacy is a restriction on the ability of others to know a person's states of mind.

The claim to privacy finds moral justification in the recognition that people need to have control over some matters that intimately relate to them in order to function as people and be responsible for their own actions. Foremost among these are rights to one's own body. If, for example, people were permitted to drug one another at will, that would effectively undercut the rest of moral life.

Just what a person is expected to do in order to respect another's privacy varies with culture. For example, expectations that people will knock on the door before entering certain sorts of areas assumes the existence of both doors and of expectations about the amount of so-called "private space" to which a person is entitled. In some contemporary cultures, parents oversee their children's affairs much more closely than in others. In traditional Chinese families, for example, it is expected that parents will do such things as read the mail addressed to their adolescent children as part of their responsible oversight of their children, whereas in Anglo-American culture such acts would be viewed as intrusions on the adolescent's privacy.

Questions of privacy have become particularly prominent as computers and other technological innovations have made it possible to collect, assemble, and transmit quantities of information in ways that previously were impossible. Once the questions of appropriate levels of privacy protection have been decided upon, the question of how that level of privacy can be practically ensured is a matter of security.

Profession*. An occupation, the practice of which directly influences human well-being and requires mastery of a complex body of knowledge and specialized skills, requiring both formal education and practical experience.

Professional responsibility. A paradigm case of the moral responsibility that arises from the special knowledge that one possesses. It is mastery of a special body of advanced knowledge, particularly knowledge which bears directly on the well-being of others, that demarcates a profession. As custodians of special knowledge which bears on human well-being, professionals are constrained by special moral responsibilities; that is, moral requirements to apply their knowledge in ways that benefit the rest of the society.

Property*. Very different sorts of things are regarded as property. Individual rights to property (other than clothing and other personal effects), especially the right to own land, is a major innovation in so-called modern thought. Land was one important kind of property, physical objects that constitute "the fruit of one's labor" was another. It was a short step from physical property to intellectual property, the fruit of one's intellectual labor which was given some recognition in the U.S. Constitution. See trademark, trade secret, copyright, patent. (Notice that "ideas" cannot be owned by these means but only some "expression," design, or device.) The advent of electronic information has raised new issues and problems about intellectual property and rights to such property, because of the extreme ease with which electronic information can be copied and transmitted.

Proprietary/property rights*. Proprietary rights, claims, etc. are the rights, claims, etc. of owners. Sorting out the rights that go with property ownership is rather complicated, both because of the variety of types of property and because of the problem of sorting out conflicting claims regarding property and conflicts between property rights and other rights.

Public Health Service. PHS.

Q

R

Research misconduct*. This term is used rather narrowly and so does not include all violations of standards of research ethics. In particular, it is not applied to violations of the norms for the use of human or animal subjects. The three actions that were the initial focus of misconduct definitions were:

• Fabrication
• Falsification
• Plagiarism

In fall of 1995 the Commission on Research Integrity appointed by the HHS offered a new and much longer definition. Instead of specifying what acts count as misconduct, it discussed general criteria for judging some wrong doing to be research misconduct. For example, the new definition says "research misconduct is significant misbehavior that fails to respect the intellectual contributions or property of others, that intentionally impedes the progress of research, or that risks corrupting the scientific record or compromising the integrity of scientific practices..." The controversy about definitions of misconduct is not over.

The term "scientific misconduct" is sometimes used as a synonym for "research misconduct," although there is a great deal more to scientific practice than research.

Responsibility*. The moral and forward-looking sense of responsibility is the sense in which one is responsible for achieving (or maintaining) a good result in some matter. The idea is that one is entrusted with achieving or maintaining this outcome, and expected to both have relevant knowledge and skills, and to make a conscientious effort. However, despite one's best efforts, the result may not be achieved. For example, patients of responsible physicians may die, and the work of a responsible engineer may result in an accident because the accident was not foreseeable, it was not possible to compensate for the factors causing the accident, or because others were unwilling to heed the engineer's warnings.

The moral and backward-looking sense of responsibility is that in which a person or group deserves ethical evaluation for some act or outcome, that is deserves moral praise for a good outcome or blame for a bad one. The moral sense of responsibility should not be confused with the causal sense of responsibility for some existing or past state of affairs. For example, when we say that "the storm was responsible for three deaths and heavy property damage," meaning that it caused these outcomes, we do not mean to attribute moral responsibility to the storm. Storms do not have moral responsibilities, and are neither responsible or irresponsible in the moral sense. However, when a moral agent is causally responsible for some outcome, that is some reason to think that the agent is morally responsible for it. Causal responsibility is not conclusive evidence of moral responsibility, however. If one's actions case a terrible outcome only because of bad moral luck, in the form of a freak accident, then one is not morally responsible for the outcome.

Forward-looking responsibilities are often specified in terms of the outcome to be achieved rather than the acts to be performed. It takes judgment to figure out what acts will achieve a given outcome. For this reason you will hear the phrase "the age of responsibility" or "the age of discretion" used to mean an age at which a person is sufficiently mature to exercise such judgment. Such practical wisdom is not required in order to fulfill many obligations which are often specified in terms of the acts to be performed or to be avoided. For example, contrast the engineer's responsibility for the safety of the public with a citizen's obligation to testify when witness to a crime. Notice that "obligation" would never be used in the way "responsible" is, to refer to a virtue of a person. That is, you would not say that so-and-so was an "obligatory" person, though you may say she was "responsible."

Sometimes "responsibility" is used to mean an act one is required to perform, as in "It is your responsibility to take minutes for this meeting." In this Center, the term "responsibility" will be used only for matters that require some exercise of discretion and judgment and required acts will just be called "obligations."

Sometimes "responsible" is used in a phrase of the form "responsible to (some other party), in which the term "responsible" is used as a synonym for "answerable" or "accountable." An example would be: "This citizens' group was accountable/responsible/answerable to its parent organization." This use of the term "responsible" is easily distinguished from the present one which is "responsible for (some matter for which one must exercise discretion)." :right of self-determination The right to choose one's own actions or course of life so long as doing so does not interfere unduly with the lives and actions of others.

Rights*. Claims that have some justification behind them. A moral right is a morally justified claim. A legal right is a legally justified claim. When we use the term right without specifying the nature of the justification, we usually mean a moral right. Rights specify the acts that are permitted, forbidden, or required. If they specify the acts that the rights-holder may perform (such as vote, or drive a car), they are often called licenses. If they specify acts that others may not perform (as the right to life obliges others not to kill the rights holder), they are called liberties or negative rights. If they specify what the rights-holder should receive, they are called rights of entitlement or positive rights. Other major types of classifications of rights are:

• Alienable rights and inalienable rights - Alienable rights may be taken or given away. Inalienable rights cannot.
• Human rights and special rights - Human rights belong to all people, or all people who are competent to exercise them. (An earlier term that is a close synonym for human rights is "natural rights.") In contrast, a right that only belongs to some people is termed a "special" right.
• Absolute rights, and prima facie rights - Absolute rights cannot be outweighed by other considerations. Prima facie rights can be outweighed by other considerations. For example, many of those who oppose capital punishment say that the right to life is an absolute right, but those who believe that capital punishment is morally justified in some circumstances say it is only a prima facie right.

When used in technical context, such as "risk assessment" or "risk management" the notion of risk is the probability or likelihood of some resulting harm (such as the likeihood of being killed by being struck by a car) multiplied by the magnitude of the harm. One can then compare, say, the average citizen's risk of death from crossing the street with such a person's risk of death from cancer in a given period. One could also compare the risk of harms of different magnitudes. For example, two monetary risks: the rather likely event of losing a quarter in a broken vending machine, and the comparatively unlikely loss of one's wallet due to robbery at gun point. It may turn out that there is a greater risk of monetary loss from out of order vending machines than from robbery at gun point. Notice that use of the technical sense of risk requires that one be able to meaningfully quantify the resulting harms. For many harms this is difficult to do except in an arbitrary way.

Risks and benefits. To use or risk-benefit analysis requires that one consider only those consequences or the probability of those consequences that can be treated as arithmetic quantities, such as risk of death, number of days of illness or cost in dollars. Therefore, it is useful to have other terms, such as harm and boon, for consequences that may not be representable as arithmetic quantities.

Risk-benefit analysis is a technique taken from economics that weighs alternative actions in terms of such consequences. It is not suited for consideration of consequences, such as the loss of moral integrity, that do not lend themselves to quantification.

S

Screening*. Testing of a large number of individuals designed to identify those with a particular genetic trait, characteristic, or biological condition. >p> Security*. The security of a system is the extent of protection against some unwanted occurrence such as the invasion of privacy, theft, and the corruption of information or physical damage.

Self-deception*. A failure to make explicit even to oneself some truth about oneself, often one's behavior. It may take the form of making up some rationalization for a behavior that is inconsistent with one's sense of self or it may take the form of failing to take notice of some of the features of the situation when it would be appropriate to do so (this phenomenon is one that psychologists call "denial.") Self-deception is a bar to authenticity.

Stakeholder*. A person or group who can affect or is affected by an action. Responsible decision making requires consideration of the effects on all stakeholders. Usually all stakeholders are not entitled to consideration of the same aspects of their welfare, however. For example, a corporate decision may affect or be influenced by employees, stockholders, customers, suppliers, communities, some government agencies, and corporate competitors. Competitors are entitled to fairness in competition, but not to the same consideration as, say, employees.

Standard*. Something established as a basis of comparison in measuring or judging capacity, quantity, content, value, quality, etc.; a specified set of safety or performance qualities which a device or process must possess. These must generally be demonstrated by a series of tests conducted under pre-determined conditions.

T

Trademark*. An officially registered and legally restricted name, symbol or representation, the use of which is restricted to its owner.

Trade secret*. A device, method or formula that gives one an advantage over the competition and which must therefore be kept secret if it is to be of special value. It is legal to use reverse engineering to learn a competitor's trade secret. "Know how" concerning research procedures may function as something like a trade secret.

Trust*. Trust is confident reliance. We may have confidence in events, people, or circumstances, or at least in our beliefs and predictions about them, but if we do not in some way rely on them, our confidence alone does not amount to trust. Reliance is a source of risk, and risk differentiates trusting in something from merely being confident about it. When one is in full control of an outcome or otherwise immune from disappointment, trust is not necessary. It is, of course, possible to rely on other people or on circumstances simply because one lacks other options.

Basis for confidence in relying on some person may not be morally sound. Trust may be naive or otherwise ill-founded. In that case it is likely to be disappointed. Trust may also rest on a morally unsound foundation as when, for example, one party feigns trustworthiness or behaves reliably only because the other party dominates. Philosopher Annette Baier offers as a test of the moral soundness of trust relationships that they thrive rather than wither when the basis for confidence is revealed. Baier's discussion of the moral soundness or decency of trust relationships draws attention to the ethical mistake of putting the preservation of dependable behavior ahead of concern for its morality. (The question of moral soundness arises only for trust relationships, so that, for example, trust in a tow rope or in a computer program might be well-founded or ill-founded but not decent or corrupt.)

Trustworthiness*. When trust is well-founded and if trust of another person or moral agent) morally sound, then it is based on trustworthiness. Put another way, that which deserves trust is trustworthy.

U

V

1. This is a good (important, significant) hypothesis.
2. That is a good (insightful or informative) article.
3. This is a good (beautiful, masterfully executed) symphony.
4. That is a good (prudent or effective) strategy.
5. This is a bad (stupid, short-sighted) idea.
6. That is a good (virtuous, of high moral character) person.
7. This is a bad (evil, vicious) motive.
8. That is a good (kind, generous or right-minded) act or deed.
9. That is the right thing to do.

There are other types of value and value judgments that we are less likely to discuss in this subject, such as religious value. Religious terms of evaluation include "sacred" and "holy," as contrasted with "profane" and "mundane." In addition to purely religious standards, most existing religions have moral or ethical standards.

Virtues and vices*. Positive and negative traits of moral character, such as honesty, kindness, or being a courageous or responsible person. Notice that these terms of moral evaluation are applied to people, rather than to their actions (like rights, obligations, and moral rules) or to the outcomes they seek to achieve (like responsibilities).

W

Not all whistle-blowing is equally adversarial to the affected organization, even though it is at least an embarrassment for an organization to be exposed as one that cannot correct its own problems. There are many regulatory agencies such as OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Organization) that exist to perform oversight and to which whistle-blowers can go anonymously. Going to those charged with oversight, such as regulatory agencies, is usually seen as much less adversarial than, say, going to the media.

Some people have used the term "whistler-blower" for those who raise an issue within their organization, but the more general term for a person who raises an issue inside or outside an organization is "complainant."

Y

Z