The goal of the ethics review is for you to demonstrate your grasp of some of the ethical issues and
challenges involved in scientific studies that we covered in the ethics lectures and workshops, and for you to
demonstrate your ability to write clearly, precisely and concisely.
The maximum essay size is 500 words, excepting only bibliographic content (citations and bibliography).
Your word count will be checked automatically and you will be penalized or failed if your essay is too long.
We understand that for many of you this will be the first essay with ethical analysis that you have written.
Given this, we have endeavored to make the requirements for this essay and the marking criteria as clear as
possible. It is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with these criteria and requirements and to submit an
essay that meets the stated standards. If you are unsure about any of the criteria and requirements then it is
essential to ask for clarification in your workshops.
It is a good idea to choose a study involving human or animal subjects. Experimental studies are an obvious
choice but observational studies with human subjects are also fine. Retrospective studies (re-analysing
existing data) or meta-analyses (studies which only collate and analyse the data from other studies) should
be avoided as they rarely involve interesting ethical issues
Essay Topic
Your task is to write a philosophy essay about the most interesting or pressing ethical matters relating to your chosen
article.
Your essay should answer one or more of the following questions about the scientific article you have chosen as the
subject of your review assessment items:
Q1. Are there any specific ethical issues raised by this particular study? If so, briefly describe one or two of them and
what you think is the right response to them. (For example the study might relate to chemical or biological weapons,
abortion, genetic engineering, cloning or some other significant ethical issue, or the study might have been designed or
conducted incompetently or unethically).
Q2. Are there human experimental subjects in the study? Was the experimentation upon them ethical? Can you tell
whether they gave informed consent to their participation in the study and was such consent sufficient? Give reasons
for your answer.
Q3. Were there animals used in the study? Can you tell whether they were treated humanely? If they suffered at all or
died do you think the benefits of the study were sufficient to justify their use? Give reasons for your answer.
Q4. What incentives, if any, might the researcher(s) who conducted this particular study have had to falsify or
manipulate their results? If the researcher(s) conducting this particular study had chosen to falsify, manipulate and/or
misrepresent their data, explain briefly the methods of manipulating the experimental design and/or the data that
might be used for this purpose and why you think it would be wrong to do so.
Note that Q1, Q2 and Q3 are asking you to ethically assess the actual content of the article you have chosen. Q4 is
asking you to discuss possible reasons for the authors of your chosen article to falsify or manipulate their results, and
the methods by which they could have done so. You will make your task easier if the paper you choose allows you to
address at least one of Q1, Q2 or Q3.
The Qualities of a Philosophy Essay
Philosophy as an academic discipline has its own specialised requirements, so even if you think you are familiar with
how to write an academic essay it is important that you take the time to read and understand what is asked of you in
writing a philosophy essay.
- A philosophy essay is a statement of your opinion. As such it is written in the first person. For example if you
disagreed with the philosopher Bloggs then you might write “I think that Bloggs’ argument is faulty because…”
This is because unlike science, which concerns itself with facts about the world, philosophy is a combination of facts
and value judgements. Claims like “It is wrong to torture animals” are value judgements, and in a philosophy essay
you are presenting and supporting your value judgements. - A philosophy essay must support its value judgements with logical arguments. This means you must clearly state
the premises and conclusions of your argument.
Premises are the assumptions you make and which you hope the reader will also make. Premises can be value
judgements such as “I believe it is wrong to cause pain to an animal, unless there is a good reason to do so” and
they can also be factual claims such as “watermelons are not a good experimental model for stress in humans”.
Premises are best chosen so as to be accessible to the majority of your peers and readers. Private spiritual beliefs,
or extreme positions on animals rights (pro or anti) are unlikely to be shared by readers or ethics committee
members, and so an essay based on such premises is unlikely to persuade your readers to agree with you.
Your conclusions should also be clearly stated, and your conclusions should follow inescapably from your premises.
For example, you might state as your premises ““It is wrong to cause pain to an animal, unless there is a good
reason to do so” and also “Cosmetics are not really important to human welfare, so cosmetics research cannot be a
good reason to hurt an animal”. From this it would follow inescapably that it is wrong to cause pain to an animal
for the purposes of cosmetics research. - A philosophy essay must be clear. The reader should not be left confused or in doubt either about the facts of the
study which you are reviewing, or about the value judgements you are making about that study. Moreover, the
reader should be clear about the way your premises fit together to form an argument and thus understand how
they justify your conclusion. - A philosophy essay must be factually accurate. If you are in doubt about any important matters of fact that relate
to your review, such as how dangerous a given dose of caffeine is, or whether animal test subjects would have
been killed after the experiment was concluded, it is up to you to find out the answers if possible. If this is not
possible for relevant parts of particular study then you need to state this clearly and make it clear when you are
making an assumption about factual matters. - A philosophy essay must be properly referenced. This means that any claims of fact that are not trivially obvious
must be backed up with a citation to a scholarly source showing the source of your claim. For example you would
not need to provide a scholarly source for the claim “The Moon revolves around the Earth”, because it is
commonplace, but you would need to provide a scholarly source for the claim “Down’s Syndrome is caused by an
extra copy of chromosome 21”.
Furthermore, any arguments, ideas, or expressions of those ideas that are not your own work must be clearly
labelled as such and a citation provided to the original source. Quotations must be placed within quotation marks.
If you quote or paraphrase anybody else’s work then you must give due credit to the original source and provide a
citation so that your reader can go to the original source if they wish. Failure to do so is plagiarism, which is a
serious academic offence, and can result in an automatic failing mark or more serious consequences. Paraphrasing
should be generally avoided. A paraphrasing which involves only changing a few words should be put in quotation
marks with the changed words placed in square brackets [ ]. Your essay should not involve substantial paraphrasing
– a few sentences at most. Students need to read the UQ Student Integrity and Misconduct policy
(http://ppl.app.uq.edu.au/content/3.60.04-student-integrity-and-misconduct and refer to Section 6.1 of this
Electronic Course Profile. PLAGIARISM is an academic offence and will be penalized. In particular, copying and
pasting parts of other students’ assignments is totally unacceptable and students who engage in this practice will
be referred for investigation for misconduct (it is a particularly bad look, for a module trying to teach ethics, to
engage in the unethical conduct of plagiarism, in your ethics assessment!)0.
For this assignment you do not have to cite your chosen article when you refer to it, however, and you do not have
to reference ideas and arguments from the course content. However, you should not just copy substantial parts of
the course content. - A philosophy essay should have correct spelling, grammar and punctuation and be written in reasonably formal
language. Slang, emoticons and so forth will be marked down. Students for whom English is not their first language
should particularly avail themselves of the multiple automatic resources avail to them, for instance, through MS
Word grammar and spell checker.
Structuring Your Essay
It is up to you how you structure your essay but it is strongly recommended that you use the following structure unless
you are sure some other structure suits your essay better. - Firstly state and explain the relevant facts about the study.
It is not necessary to state all of the details of the study. You should briefly outline what the researchers did and
what they concluded, focusing on any morally important aspects of the study. For example, if the study involved
humans or animals you should make sure you state how many humans or animals were involved, what risks or
suffering they underwent, what approval was obtained beforehand, what happened to them afterwards and so on. - Secondly state your thesis. Your thesis is the ethical conclusion you have reached about the study. You might
conclude that a study was ethically sound, or you might conclude it was ethically unsupportable and should not
have been conducted, or you might conclude something in between. - Thirdly clearly state the premises (facts and value judgements) which you base your argument upon, and show how
accepting your thesis follows from accepting your premises.
Criteria and Marking
Review the Criteria and Standards for Ethics Review at the end of this document which shows the marking criteria.
Referencing and Bibliography
In philosophy there is no one specific format for references which we require you to use; we only insist that you make it
clear where any fact, idea or quotation you reference came from. If the idea or quote came from an article or book (not
a website) it is essential you put in the exact page number.
If you have no preferred style of citation, we suggest the Harvard style of citation where you insert the author’s name,
the publication date and the exact page referred to into the sentence in parentheses, like this: “The Lesser Twisted
Whatnot mates during the summer months (Smith, 1908, 196)”. The full bibliographic details of the Smith
article/book/whatever should be listed in a bibliography at the end of your essay.
The UQ Library has more detailed information on referencing styles at: http://www.library.uq.edu.au/help/referencingstyle-guides
The Essay Writing Process
Your first task, which is probably best done somewhere you have access to the internet or to a university library, should
be to read your chosen article carefully and make a note of any important questions you will need to answer before you
can form a well-supported ethical analysis of the article. Do you know what all the technical terms used mean? Are
there any factual questions you need to find the answer to, perhaps relating to the risks of a given chemical or
procedure? You are well advised to make sure you have all the facts straight in your mind before beginning to write
your essay.
If your ethical analysis hinges on particularly obscure or hard-to-find-out matters of fact you may even find it necessary
to contact scientists working in the relevant area before you can fix a well-informed opinion about the ethics of your
chosen article.
Once you are ready to begin writing, you will save time and produce a better essay if you make an outline of your essay
first, possibly in point form, laying out each part of the question(s) you plan to answer, how you plan to answer them,
and what your overall thesis is going to be. It is much less painful to change or discard parts of your essay that don’t
work at the planning stage, than it is to cut them out later after you have already written them in full.
Now you have an essay outline in point form, and a clear idea of what your ethical judgement will be, you can expand
each section into a finished passage in whichever order seems best to you, and then polish the finished draft so as to
best use the available word count and express your argument as clearly as possible. Redrafting – going back to your
essay after a few days and trying to rewrite your argument more simply and directly – is always a fruitful exercise. In
fact, the single most straightforward way to improve your essay is to read it over as you were reading it for the first
time as a critical reader and then edit all those parts that are unclear or that could be expressed more succinctly and
logically.
Avoiding Common Mistakes
It is vital that you present ethical analysis. It is insufficient to merely state ethically relevant facts and leave the reader
to draw their own conclusions about them.
Make sure you explain, clearly and concisely, what took place in your chosen study in such a way that the reader can
fully understand what the researchers did and why they did it. It is impossible for the reader to be sure your ethical
conclusions are supported, if you have not told the reader what the paper is about. This might include explaining what
larger social or technological problems the researchers are trying to understand or solve.
You must explain any technical terms or ideas that you refer to in your essay unless you think that the average,
educated person would understand those terms immediately and completely. This will demonstrate that you
understand what those terms mean.
It is very highly recommended that you make some explicit use of the ideas from moral philosophy taught in the ethics
lectures, such as Kantian respect for persons or utilitarian ethics. This will demonstrate that you understood and can
apply the relevant course content.
Your assigned topic is solely to assess the ethics of the specific paper you have chosen, not the ethics of any previous
papers they draw upon or the ethics of the research area in general.
Your task is to provide an even-handed analysis of the chosen paper, not to go out of your way to find reasons to judge
the paper negatively. If a paper appears entirely ethical then it is your job to show that to the reader.
Always use the best sources possible, which will usually be peer-reviewed journal articles or specialist books. Avoid
using any “pop science” or advocacy site as a source, especially one with a clear political agenda.
A Few Final Words
It is not necessary for you to begin your essay with a vague preamble such as “For centuries scientists have striven to
understand the relationship between diet and health”. You should just launch directly into your explanation of the facts
about the study: what was done, who did it, when they did it, where and why.
Similarly you do not need to end your essay by attempting to tie your analysis to some bigger picture (“In the age-old
investigation into the role of yolk all too often we lose sight of…”). You should simply state your conclusion about the
ethics of your chosen article.
Remember that the markers will not have read your chosen article and will not be specialists in whatever field it covers,
so you must make sure that you explain what took place for the reader, and you must do so in terms which an
intelligent layperson can understand.
It is a very good idea to have a friend or relative read your finished essay before you submit it, because they will often
find errors or ambiguities which you will have missed.
Many students find it hard to write an essay unless they are very interested in the essay’s topic. If it turns out that your
chosen article does not inspire you, and you realise this before you have invested too much of your time in writing your
essay, you can always go back to the library and get a different article. Generally speaking articles in medicine or
experiments using human subjects almost always turn out to be interesting topics for ethics reviews.
If your chosen article does not touch on any ethical issues itself (this often happens with purely observational studies
with no experimental component) then your best option is to answer question Q4, and talk about what potential
pressures the researchers might have been under to behave unethically and what methods they might have used to act
unethically.
The cost-effectiveness of a study compared to other things that could have been done with the funding is always
ethically relevant.
Lastly, it’s perfectly normal for it to turn out that the research in your chosen article was handled entirely ethically, and
so the conclusion of your ethical assessment might well be that the researchers did absolutely nothing ethically wrong.
In that case your job is to explain the important potential ethical concerns and how your particular author(s) avoided
them.
Criteria and Standards for Ethics Essay
Mark 9-10 7-8 5-6 3-4 0 – 2
Explanation Explains the chosen
paper’s topic and
methods in a very
clear, concise and
interesting way.
Explains the chosen
paper’s topic and
methods clearly.
Explains most
aspects of the
chosen paper
reasonably clearly
but has some
omissions or lack of
clarity.
Explanation is
confusing, or
important issues
are either treated
vaguely or ignored.
Fails to explain
any relevant
aspects of the
chosen study.
Focus Identifies all the
most pressing
ethical issues with
regard to the
chosen paper.
Identifies important
issues but one or
more important
ethical issues are
not discussed.
Mostly fails to
discuss the
important issues.
Some relevant
ethical issues are
identified.
Significant
irrelevance or
vagueness, and/or
failure to identify
any important
ethical issues.
Fails to identify
or discuss any
relevant ethical
matters.
Argument Careful and critical
analysis, clear
logical structure,
clear introduction
and conclusion.
Includes at least
one vague or faulty
analysis or
argument, or the
conclusions are not
fully supported
Most arguments
have some flaws.
Some support for
conclusions.
Failure to
adequately support
any issue(s) or
claims.
No attempt to
provide a
relevant, logical
argument.
Content Explicitly
demonstrates high
level of ability to
apply concepts
from moral
philosophy.
Clearly
demonstrates
understanding of
concepts from
moral philosophy.
Basic
understanding of
course content,
ethical reasoning
not explicit.
Significant
misunderstandings
about course
content.
No evidence of
understanding
course content.
The above four criteria are approximately weighted evenly. In addition, up to 2 marks can be deducted in each
of the following categories.
Grammatical or spelling
errors.
Exceeds word limit, or falls significantly short
(>80 words) of word limit.
Errors or omissions in citations or
bibliography.
