Ethical Standards: The Belmont Report Scandal

The Belmont Report was published in the Federal Register in 1979. It is a document written by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which formed as a result to the Tuskegee Experiment scandal and serves to shape bioethics policy in the United States. This report outlines the ethical standards that research involving human subjects is required to follow. Vindu Goel is a technology reporter for The Times and has recently written about various social media companies. In 2014, he authored “Facebook Tinkers with Users’ Emotions in News Feed Experiment, Stirring Outcry,” which describes how Facebook manipulated half of a million users’ newsfeeds to test if increased positive or negative posts

The first sections provide a background for what the later sections will discuss as this section makes the distinction between ‘practice’ and ‘research.’ However, these two terms can occur simultaneously, but if the smallest amount of research is present, the activity is required to be reviewed for the protection of its human subjects. Basic Ethical Principles states that there are three fundamental principles for ethical research involving human subjects: respect for persons, beneficence-maximizing benefits and minimizing harm, and justice-fairness of distribution. These principles are applied in the last section which is also broken down into three parts. The first of which states that informed consent is needed; this ensures that participants agreed to participate and that they are presented all the information clearly before the experiment or after-only if the results could be affected. The second section accounts for potential harms and analyzes if the research is worth the risks. The final section requires the process of selecting subjects to be socially fair and