Principle 4    Fairness in the treatment of others

•   Treat fellow student researchers, sources of information, and others  involved in the research fairly and with respect.

•    Appropriately reference and cite the work of others.

Guidelines

This deals primarily with plagiarising and referencing research. Teachers are currently working hard on this feature of research ethics.

Principle 4 also deals with not misrepresenting or using a ‘strawman’ to characterise the perspective or data being presented for discussion. 

The Straw man fallacy is a common error in argument and is worth discussing with students to help them be fair to their sources and fellow scholars.

Tips for Teaching in this area:

-      Teach students about the how to reference paraphrasing and summaries appropriately and the extent of referencing required at the Senior Secondary level. For example, a list of references at the end of a task is not enough to prevent a charge of plagiarism, it just lists the sources that weren't referenced.

       If there is only a bibliography, but no referenceing the student must still be subject to penalty under the school's processes for academic integrity. The converse is not so, that is just not abiding by presentation conventions. 

-      Students should only include material that they reference in the paper in their bibliography. If the source has influenced their understanding, then it should be referenced in the body of the text. There is no such thing as a general sources, it either had impact on the paper, or it didn't. 

-      Students often need direct instruction in how to set up endnotes or footnotes on a document. They are often inadept users of word processing programs.

-      School librarians can provide support to teach students about referencing appropriately. There are websites and apps that support referencing.

-      Students should integrate the name of the scholar into the sentence with the reference to make the origin of the idea clear, e.g., According to Barry White, there is no limit to the amount of affection he requires (White, B, 1974). is much better than There is not limit to the amount to affection they inspire (White, B, 1974).

-     AI is a source of information to be referenced and included in the bibliography. Increasingly common practice is for prompts and AI responses to be included as screen shots in the appendix to the work, or to be referenced as one would a personal interview, as both are similarly ephemeral. 

Strong critical analysis and research skills are characterised by the precise representation of the arguments gathered during research. Strawman arguments might then be evidence of either weak comprehension or weak analysis and poor use of disciplinary methods, and this can be reflected in the grading. Or, it is evidence of wilful misrepresentation which might be actionable under these rule.