Research Ethics Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Using someone else's research without due acknowledgement is Plagiarism.

Plagiarism is presenting another person's words, ideas, data or findings as one's own without crediting them. In India, the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018 lay down penalties for it.

Copyright and patent are legal rights that protect creators' works and inventions, and publication is the act of making work public. None of these names the wrongful use.

Answer: C

Plagiarism means using others' ideas as your own.

Plagiarism is presenting another person's words, ideas, data or work without acknowledging the source, so that they appear to be one's own. It is a serious breach of research ethics, and in India the UGC regulations of 2018 set penalties for it.

Making acknowledgements is the very opposite, since crediting sources is how plagiarism is avoided. Making an abstract is summarising one's own paper, and a pledge is a promise; neither has anything to do with plagiarism.

Answer: B

Informed consent is obtained before research to meet ethical standards.

Research ethics require that participants be told the purpose, procedure, risks and benefits of a study, that they agree voluntarily, and that they can withdraw at any time. This principle comes from the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki and is enforced in India by ethics committees under ICMR guidelines.

Consent is not obtained to satisfy participants' psychological needs, to guarantee standards in the research results, or as a sampling guideline, although refusals can affect the sample.

Answer: B

Publishing a new paper from the data of an earlier paper is unethical.

Reusing data already published, whether one's own or another researcher's, and presenting the result as new research is a form of plagiarism or duplicate (redundant) publication. It misleads readers and journals about the originality of the work and can double-count the same findings in the literature.

So it cannot be called ethical, permissible or proper. Earlier data may legitimately be cited and discussed, with full acknowledgement, but the question describes publishing it as a new research paper.