Ethical Issues

Ethical Issues/Dilemmas: This course heavily emphasizes consideration of ethics within science, society, and developing an understanding of ethics for decision making behavior in all aspects of life. In at least half of the meeting sessions an ethical issue will be presented and/or discussed. Each time it will be your task to quickly identify the core ethical issue, the stakeholders involved in the issue and to analyze the issue using at least two different methods (from several that will be taught) in order to determine risks/benefits for participants and researchers. You will also need to thoughtfully consider how to prevent (through training, planning, avoidance, etc.) or mitigate the issue. Finally, you will be provided with the scientific codes of ethics used by ethnobotanists, botanists and anthropologists and will be expected to apply these when addressing these issues. Together, all of the above, when done well, can be addressed in a nice, tight paragraph that can mostly be composed within class as we are chatting about the issue as a group. We want you to learn to think "on-the-fly" and this is part of how we will be pushing for that sort of thinking to develop. 5 points. (expected time to complete: 10 minutes (after training), mostly within class discussion sessions.)

BOT 440: Ethics Problem Assignment Evaluation Analytical Rubric