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.

Answer: B

The misconduct is Fabrication.

Research misconduct is usually defined as fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP). Fabrication means making up data or results and recording or reporting them as if they were real; falsification means manipulating or changing real data.

Plagiarism is using another's work without credit, not inventing data. Misinterpretation and biased sampling are errors or weaknesses of method rather than the deliberate invention of data.

Answer: D

The term is Attribution.

Attribution is the researcher's ethical obligation to credit the source of any idea, words or work taken from others, through citation and referencing. Failing in it is what produces plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the opposite: presenting others' work as one's own. Authorship concerns who is listed as an author and is responsible for a publication. An acknowledgement is a note thanking people or bodies who helped, such as funders or colleagues; it is a courtesy within a work, not the general duty to credit others' ideas and words.

Answer: B

Good research ethics means avoiding practices that harm honesty and fairness. Assigning a particular research problem to one student only avoids duplicated effort and overlap and keeps credit clear. Not disclosing holdings in a company that sponsors the research hides a conflict of interest, discussing confidential data from a paper under review breaks the reviewer's duty of confidence, and submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal is duplicate submission, so all three are unethical. The answer is assigning a particular research problem to one student only.

Answer: B

Research ethics include honesty in reporting the data, integrity and objectivity, which means that the researcher does not let personal bias affect the results. Subjectivity, which means allowing one's own opinions and feelings to shape the work, runs against these, so it is not a part of research ethics. The answer is subjectivity. Honesty means not fabricating or falsifying data, and integrity means keeping to the agreed methods and giving credit to the work of others.

Answer: B

Good research ethics include a literature review that acknowledges the contributions of others in the field or relevant prior work.

Crediting earlier work gives honest credit to the people who did it and avoids plagiarism, and it lets readers see how the present work fits in.

Publishing the same paper in two journals without telling the editors is duplicate publication. Trimming outliers without giving reasons is data manipulation, and adding an author who made no real contribution is gift authorship. All three are breaches of research ethics.