ETHICS IN SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Year:2008 | Volume:3 | Issue:1-2

Background: Agricultural biotechnology (especially, genetic engineering) presents opportunities for reducing poverty, food insecurity, child malnutrition, and natural resource degradation, and increasing the efficiency of crop improvement. However, the integration of biotechnology into agricultural research and transgenic plant production in many countries faces many challenges, which must be addressed: financial, technical, political, environmental, activism, intellectual-property, biosafety, and trade-related issues. Technological innovations bring their own set of benefits and risks to the environment, and no technology is 100% safe. When a new technology can resolve one of human problems, without itself causing new problem, its application is moral. On the other hand, unscientific and inconsequential reasons to oppose with a new technology are immoral. Therefore, if transgenic crops in any way reduce the adverse effects of conventional agriculture, without themselves causing additional problems, they represent a technical and ethical advance. It is evident that opinions on transgenic crops are based on value judgments and not on scientifically established facts, and such values and attitudes are likely to change with time and circumstance and with modifications to conceptual systems. Scientific concerns of this technology can be resolved by scientific reasons.Conclusion: This article represents a review of some of the ethical dilemmas that have arisen as a result of the development and deployment of transgenic crop plants. The potential for transgenic crops to alleviate human hunger and the possible effects on human health are discussed. Risks and benefits to the environment resulting from genetic engineering of crops are considered, in addition to effects on biodiversity. The socioeconomic impacts and distribution of benefits from transgenic technologies are reviewed.

Background: The Industrial revolution gave man the ability to dominate the nature, but the man-made environmental problems cannot all be solved by technology alone. Changes in human behaviour and policies are necessary, hence the need for codes of conduct based on the ethics of the environment. In this situation, most of the philosophers have tried to include environmental considerations in their viewpoints. Of course a specific doctrine can’t work for all various cultures, but all of them should revise their principles to become one of stewardship. The role of the religion in regard to nature has been discussed by most of the environmentalists; even religion has been accused to be responsible for the environmental crisis. The aim of this paper is to discuss the Islamic theology concerning nature and to present an Islamic eco-theology which can be suitable for Iranian culture.Methods: Of course perception of other culture’s achievements can be an effective assistant for a better cognition of insider viewpoints. In order to achieve such an Idea, after expressing ethic etymology, the progressive process of western environmental ethics has been divided into three periods of “Mysticism”, “Anthropocentrism” and “Ecocentrism”; each period’s position about the religions has been mentioned and Islamic edifications about environment have been discussed.Conclusion: The results show that Islamic edifications include most of the contemporary environmental ethics concepts, and in the event that a communication take place between western philosophers and Muslim moralists, environmental concepts will improve.

Background: Distance learning in virtual universities provides the possibility of learning outside university classrooms for students, eradicating geographic limitations and offering opportunity of learning for all those who do not have a chance to access higher education.Methods: This article uses the two research methods of bibliometric and content analysis to examine the alignment of virtual universities with traditional universities with respect to the execution of their roles, innovative methods suggested to obtain their objectives and new ethical concerns arising in this sphere. We have investigated the compatibility of virtual universities’ values in relation to goals achieved by higher education authorities, namely: transfer of academic values, academic freedom, possibilities of using different kinds of instructions, transfer of social values and equality of using facilities. The process of becoming accommodated with traditional university objectives demands, in itself, the development of new technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networks, university simulations, mobile games and mobile learning. In this method of learning, a content that is built and distributed differently creates new ethical dilemmas.Conclusion: Each section in this article discusses how to solve these problems. At the end, after analysing ethical problems, three modes of virtue ethics, prevention and use of new technology is proposed.

Background: Ethics in virtual education is a preventive measure for unethical deeds in the environment of virtual education. Specification and compilation of ethical responsibilities of organizations dealing with virtual education with respect to their own rights in particular and others rights in general is really needed in the widespread and free domain of electronic communications.Methods: This article defines the precise meaning of ethics while analyzing it in the cognitive psychology and virtual education, and comprehensively distinguishing the boundaries between internal and external environments of organization with an approach to ideals, values and commitment of the organization for conceptualizing virtual education ethics.To define comprehensive ethical codes in the ethics of virtual education and stating accountability of organization for unethical behaviors, calls for such a conceptualization. The codification of ethical affairs would be useless without such a conceptualization. Therefore, virtual education ethics are defined through ethical responsibilities of an organization with respect to its internal (environment managers, advisors, professors, staff, etc) and external environment (publishers, decision-makers, authorities, government, etc) and behavioral communicative models based on respect to others rights. Conclusion: This article strives to elaborate the above points while putting the emphasis on the necessity of conceptualization.

Background: Every day criminal justice system approaches the crimes that it does not find a clue and mark of propagators for. During the last decade, science of Forensic Genetics has provided better identification and surely information from remaining of propagators of crimes with the method of analyzing their DNA. However, collecting and unsuitable use of the DNA information may blemishes some of the ethical and legal principles such as informed consent, respect to privacy and confidence.Some of the legislatures pass, using the information without the informed consent. The other states’ statutes expressly prohibit the use of the DNA database to obtain information on investigations. The remaining states such as Iran neither expressly authorize nor prohibit such implications. Methods: This paper was prepared after searching books and papers by related words during the period of 1998 to 2007 and by consulting with experts.Conclusion: Although the objective of Forensic DNA databank is to improve the criminal proceedings, but there may be unintended negative consequences as well. This method may violate freedom and privacy or exercise the social discrimination. To confirm ethical and legal principles of using such information, obtaining informed consent is a necessary step. On the other hand, perhaps catch of informed consent from convicted and accused persons considering to circumstances of commission of crimes is unnecessary and sometimes impossible. But in this way, it's not possible to launch the excessive use and it is necessary to enact the rules.

Background: Ethics is a new subject in decision making and management science (that has the same meaning with Operations Research), which has great appeal for researchers in this scientific course and it can be considered with elegant research vision. The strategic nature of management science is an important subject in span of humanities sciences over the other sciences, because for every decision in this area, it is necessary to take into account people, environment and the nature of the society. One of the effective ways to consider the ethics in all aspects of human activities is to use ethics in decision making and operations research (OR).Methods: In this review article while comparing the natural world positions and humanity world (compare Physics with operations research), in the scale of decision making in this position, we concentrate on the subject that decision making in humanity situations needs to focus on three influencing factors including rationality, subjectivity and ethics. The article has discussed about these three factors, thus for the rationality factor basic models of OR, for the subjectivity factor, use of Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and finally for the ethic factor, ethical subjects like sustainable development, social equilibrium, pollution, waste management, natural environment commitment, raw management and etc, were investigated. The paper discusses some points about balancing between these three factors in OR models. Finally, sorer of the suggested topics such as text of an oath for OR, ethics in modeling were proposed and then conclusions and remarks for the future, were noted.Conclusion: Decision making in the area of management science is not realistic without paying attention to ethics and social responsibility. Nowadays, the authors work about interference of ethics in decision making and suggest some methods. This article examines past researches and latest outcomes completely, to gain access to a multicriteria methodology which researchers and decision makers able to interference ethics subjects in modeling and decision making.

Background: Accounting is both an essential practice and a vital profession in the economically developed world of today. It is an essential practice because the current economic system could not exist without it. A distinguishing mark of accounting profession is acceptance of the responsibility to the public. Society places even higher expectations on professionals. People need to have confidence in the quality of the complex services provided by professionals. So their services, especially financial statements should be highly competent, reliable, and objective. Then accountants must not only be well qualified but must also possess a high degree of professional integrity. A professional's good reputation is one of his or her most important possessions. So ethics in accounting is of utmost importance to accounting professionals and those who rely on their services. However in Iran few researches have been done in accounting ethics.Methods: This research has been done with the use of various libraries and electronic data bases. The paper first of all explains ethical principles and rules of conduct in accounting profession. Then it points out the most important ethical problems of the profession and their samples. Finally it suggests a few solutions for solving these problems and repetition of professional reputation.Conclusion: The future of the accounting profession depends on ethical leadership by accounting professionals and accounting educators. Leaders in the accounting profession and in academe should focus on calling individuals to excellence. By presenting the importance of high ethical standards, by teaching the importance of personal integrity, we summon current and future accountants to his or her nobility. In doing so, we ensure the future of the accounting profession, which will continue its historic role of fostering the success of the economy and the nation.

Background: In general, justice is the concept, which is associated with the social and moral values. In other words, in morality and particularly in social morality, justice and equity are fundamental concepts. The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of evaluation and importance of justice on pay satisfaction with regards to perceived distributive justice as mediator variable. Methods: The sample group consisted of 2812 personnel of a public organization from all over Iran. The sample group was selected by using random sampling method. Research instruments were: justice evaluation, justice importance, pay distributive justice perception, global distributive justice perception and pay satisfaction. Data was analyzed with the use of structural equation modeling on the basis of maximum likelihood. LISREL statistical software was used for analysis.Results: Analysis of data verified five research hypotheses, which were presented on the basis of conceptual model. Results showed that pay distributive justice perception and global distributive justice perception have direct effect (b=0.22 and b=0.84 respectively) on affective response on pay satisfaction. But the effects of justice evaluation, justice importance and interaction of justice evaluation and justice importance on pay satisfaction were mediated through pay distributive justice perception and global distributive justice perception. Conclusion: In general, the results of this research support the mediator role of justice perception on the relationship between evaluation and importance of justice with pay satisfaction. Also the results of this research provide support for justice model which in this model, personnel affective response (including pay satisfaction) was elicited from comparison between actual share and just share of pay.

Background: It is expected that researchers pursue their research activities in a manner that is consistent with the professional ethics. Ethical codes represent the most important guidelines for researcher. While the importance of ethical issues/codes is well founded in the scientific research literature, no framework of ethical issues has been addressed and organized adequately.Methods: This study employed descriptive qualitative content analysis and open deductive codification to develop a framework of ethical issues from 30 organizations’ ethical codes. All of the organizations were related to scientific and technological research.Results: This paper outlines a framework that addresses and organizes ethical issues in scientific researches. This framework organizes ethical issues within 10 stakeholders and 5 sub processes of research. All ethical research issues can be divided into 50 cells of the framework.Conclusion: In order to guarantee effective ethical decision making, a comprehensive integrative framework is necessary. The suggested framework in this paper can address, organize and integrate ethical issues. Also it provides direction for future collaborative research and has 4 other functionalities.

Background: Belief to the justice has been associated with the ethical and humanity values for several reasons. Furthermore, human’s interests to the economical and material issues determine the human’s belief orientation about existence or non-existence of justice in the world. This research was administered with the purpose of exploratory analysis about relationship between value orientation and love to money with just and unjust world beliefs among males and females in Esfaham city.Methods: From statistical populations which were Esfaham inhabitants, 700 people (350 males and 350 females) were selected using multi-stage sampling. Research method was path analysis. The questionnaires of research were: belief to the just and unjust world with 20 items, love to money with 17 items (with four subscales including importance, success, motivator and richness) and value orientation with 20 items (with four subscales including universalism, achievement, power and benevolence). Data was analyzed by using path analysis.Results: The results revealed that on male’s belief to the just world, success, universalism and benevolence and on female’s belief to the just world, success and achievement have direct significant path coefficients (P<0.01 or P<0.05). But about belief to the unjust world, results showed that among males, only universalism and among females only importance, success and motivator of money have reverse significant path coefficients (P<0.01 or P<0.05). Conclusion: Research evidences revealed that in males, value orientations and love to money have different relation with belief to the just and unjust world than females. The implications of paths, on the basis of path diagram have been discussed.