Ethics in (Technical Report) Writing

An old academic joke: if you take your material - data and ideas - from

one source, you commit plagiarism; if you take it from 20 sources, you

conduct research.

More to the point, the teacher or examiner may well catch you out if you

limit your investigation of a topic to a single book or article. But even if you

do draw on a variety of sources, your responsibility as a researcher is not

over.

You have to absorb and adapt the material, and so contribute something of

your own - a new perspective (angle, viewpoint, perception) on the material

or a new structure of it, if not actual fresh ideas.

Research begins with your own knowledge and ideas - write down in points

from every relevant fact or thought you may have on the subject.

Next, if appropriate, discussion with others, or interviews. Confer (Talk)

with relatives or fellow-students - not just for their ideas, but as a stimulus

for further ideas of your own. Contact different people or organisations for

authenticity of the research or project you are describing.

Then, your own books and notes - primary texts if possible, such as the play

or novel you intend writing about; then secondary sources, such as lecture

notes or a textbook.

If you simply adopt or adapt ideas of experts, you are only harming

yourself and undermining or damaging your education in the long run.

You will never learn to think independently and judge a topic critically if

you always rely on other people's opinions.

Reading extra books and articles on your research topic not only does it

indicate your scholarly initiative, but it will probably produce amore

interesting research or report, containing information new even to your

reader, even to your supervisor himself.

Writing Ethically
Because technical/scientific writing often has consequences for large

numbers of people, ethical considerations frequently play a role in the

writing process.

 it is sometimes a temptation in a feasibility report to soft-pedal

(underplay) results that do not support the recommendation the

writer wishes to make.

 It may seem advantageous in a proposal to exaggerate an

organization’s ability to do a certain kind of research.

 A scientist may be too willing to ignore results that do not fit his

theory and report those that do.

Each of these acts would be unethical

What Makes an Act Unethical?

Most of us carry around ethical rules in our head - it is unethical

to lie, cheat, and steal and we would likely agree that it is wrong

to make promises we don’t intend to keep or to plagiarize a

paper.
  eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant

proposed, we should not act in a way that we cannot will to

be universal behavior.

For example, you might make a promise that you have no

intention of keeping, but you cannot will that to be universal

behavior. For, if you did, all promises would be worthless, and it

would be pointless to make a promise, false or otherwise.

 An act should do the greatest good for the greatest number

of people. For example:

 causing an industrial plant to clean up its smokestack

emissions may be an economic evil for the company and its

stockholders, but be the greatest good for the large general

population that must breathe those emissions.

 Medical scientists who fudge (fabricate) their data to

produce impressive conclusions may become famous, but

unsuspecting people may be injured as a result of the

deception.
 Acting ethically often involves putting selfish interests aside

for the sake of others. George F. R. Ellis, a modern-day

student of ethics, stated this as a universal principle of

ethical behavior:

The foundational line of true ethical behavior, its main guiding

principle valid across all times and cultures, is the degree of

freedom from self-centeredness of thought and behavior, and

willingness freely to give up one’s own self-interest on behalf of

others.

Why Should We Act Ethically?

 acting ethically is a price we pay for living in a free,

civilized society

 a nonethical society would either be barbaric or

totalitarian (dictatorial)

 a world without ethics would be a world in which

anything goes: murder, theft, rape, pillage, lying, and

cheating in all their forms. It would be a society unfit to

live in
 conversely, when ethics are lacking, the state, in order to

maintain a civilization, would have to have laws

restricting all kinds of unethical behavior.

Recognizing Unethical Communication

Plagiarism
Deliberately Using Imprecise or Ambiguous Language
Making False Implications
Manipulating the Data
Using Misleading Visuals

Plagiarism

Ethical writers acknowledge the sources of the words, ideas, and

findings they use. In some forms of writing, journalism for

example, the acknowledgment may be in the text in a statement

like, “As Dr. Ken Olson discovered, it’s possible to vaccinate

mosquitoes to prevent their developing and passing dengue on to

human beings.”

To present the words and work of others as your own is

plagiarism. It’s a form of lying and highly unethical. Take every

precaution to avoid even the appearance of plagiarism. For

example, make sure that even your acknowledged paraphrases

and summaries do not track the original so closely that they

border on stealing another person’s words.

Deliberately Using Imprecise or Ambiguous Language

 Imagine the writer of a feasibility report who wishes to convey

the impression that a certain change in company policy is
desirable.
 He takes a survey of all the workers in the company and finds
that 50.1 percent of the 20 percent who returned his survey favor
the change.
In his report he writes “A majority of those who returned the
survey favored the change.”

By using majority, he makes a stronger case for change than if he

reported the actual precise figure of 50.1 percent.

In addition, by not revealing that this “majority” represents only 10

percent of the company’s workers, he further strengthens what is
actually rather weak support for his case.
He has not lied, but through imprecision he has certainly misled his
audience.
Making False Implications

Writers can imply that things are better than they are by
manipulating their language.

For example, a writer answering an inquiry about her company’s

voltage generator could reply, “Our voltage generator is designed
to operate from the heat of Saudi Arabian deserts to the frozen
tundra of Greenland.”

It may be true that the generator was designed that way, but if it
operates well only between Atlanta and Toronto, the writer has
made a false implication without telling an outright lie.

For another example, imagine a mutual fund that led its market
in returns for ten years.

In the eleventh year, the original fund manager retires and a new
manager takes over. In that year and the next, the fund drops to
the bottom tenth of its market in returns.

The writer of an advertising brochure for the fund writes the

following: “Our fund has led the market for ten of the last twelve
years.”
Again the writer avoids an outright lie, but clearly has made an
unethical statement.

Manipulating the Data

In the book, Honor in Science. Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research

Society, lists three ways scientists can present their results
unethically:

Trimming: the smoothing of irregularities to make the data look

extremely accurate and precise.

Cooking: retaining only results that fit the theory and discarding
others.

Forging: inventing some or all of the research data that are

reported, and even reporting “data” from experiments that were
never performed.

Only the last of these three manipulations is clearly a lie, but all
misrepresent the data, and all are unethical.
Using Misleading Visuals

Like words, visuals can misrepresent data and mislead unwary

(innocent) readers.

The fundamental principle in constructing an ethical visual is to

represent the data accurately and proportionally.

Misleading and regular pie charts