Week 2 Case Study

Case Study 2

Lesotho is a small developing country contained within South Africa. You and your team of academic researchers (10 in all) are spending the next two weeks traveling to different communities throughout Lesotho to test water sources for disease-causing pathogens. The testing you need to do is simple but requires significant assistance from the community – showing your team all the different locations where individuals get their water from, and places/methods for storing the water. You do not see the need to pay the community members, considering if someone asked you about your water source, you would not mind driving them up to the lake! The ultimate goal of the project is to understand the life cycle and characteristics of a specific pathogen, which is found only in this region of Lesotho. Several publications are expected from this research study. A comprehensive profile of this pathogen can help in many ways including development of chemical additives to make the water safe to drink.

Ethical Issues: The study being conducted may be Hit-And-Run Research. The researchers are not compensating the community members for their time and effort.

Step 1: Determine the facts in the situation – obtain all of the unbiased facts possible. Clearly state the ethical issue. 

• Involves visiting a number of small communities in Lesotho
• 10 academic researchers spending 2 weeks in Lesotho
• There are many disease-causing pathogens in the water
• Need to do simple water collections but you require significant assistance from the community
• Understanding the life cycle of the pathogen will help make the water safe to drink
• As of now community members are not compensated for their help
• Expecting publications
• Assuming the water is natural in source
• Lesotho is a country in Southern Africa, has a population of 2.142 million

Step 2: Define the Stakeholders – those with a vested interest in the outcome

• Primary
  • People of Lesotho who may gain cleaner water
    • Fishers, farmers, community members
  • Researchers developing chemical additives
• Secondary
  • Hospitals 
  • Health care workers 
  • Universities 
  • Investors, Organizations, Companies, Funding Agencies
  • Nearby Communities 
• Tertiary 
  • Other researchers looking to solve similar problems in nearby communities

Step 3: Assess the motivations of the Stakeholders

• Primary 
  • The researchers are trying to understand the pathogen that is only found in the region of Lesotho 
    • Also motivated by desire for publications + success in their industry + more grants, to do more research
  • The people are motivated by the want to have clean and safe water sources for people in their community, might want to understand the pathogen that has been harmful to them 
• Secondary 
  • Hospitals are able to use the local information to analyze the pathogen and gather treatments for individuals affected 
  • Healthcare workers are able to directly analyze the results and work with patients on their effects
  • Universities would be able to use this as an opportunity to increase reputation and use it as a chance for publications and experience. In the case that the research proves to be advantageous then it could be used to promote other ventures.
  • Investors, Organizations, Companies are motivated by the increased amount of relevant research on the topic to utilize the data in other areas. If the research was successful, it should bring good publicity to the funding agencies. 
    • Gives rise to potential solutions if the issue were to arise in another country, thus stimulating the economy (better understanding of the world) 
  • Nearby Communities can use similar chemical additives depending on the results of the identified pathogens
• Tertiary
  • Other researchers would gain knowledge or studies that may support or buff their own findings

Step 4: Formulate (at least three) alternative solutions – based on information available, using basic ethical core values as guide

• Solution 1: Give the community members some type of compensation for their work provided 

• Ethical Principle or code

• • • • Treating everyone fairly is necessary; duty-based thinking

• Pros

• • • • The water will be analyzed and potentially cleaned
      • Provides jobs potentially (paying the community to help)
      • Supports the community 

• Cons

• • • • Determining an appropriate compensation for the tasks
      • Takes money out of the budget for research

• Solution 2: ​​Having a free seminar available for the community members who are interested in learning about water-drinking safety

• Ethical Principle or code

• • • • Duty-based thinking
        • Allows locals to decide if they want to be involved or not based on the information they hear from the researchers/seminar

• Pros

• • • • Community members are more likely to be willing to assist with the research project because they can become more aware of the problems with their water
        • Those who attended the seminar will most likely share the information they learned to other community members who did not attend the seminar
      • Partners like the universities will be able to conduct their research with a positive relationship with the Lesotho community

• Cons

• • • • No guarantee that community members would attend the seminar
      • Require more time, money, and effort

• Solution 3: The funding agencies could hold the researchers to a contract that forces them to pass the research onto an appropriate agency that could create the change (water treatment etc.) or withhold a certain portion of the funding until someone else has the information and is working on a solution.

• Ethical Principle or code

• • • • Duty based thinking, care based thinking 
      • You have a duty to bring the research that you discover back in order to have actual positive impact
      • With care based thinking, by sending resources or information back to the community workers in Lesotho you are giving back to the relationships and people you made connections with who helped you 

• Pros

• Prevents or attempts to prevent Hit-And-Run research

• • • • Tries to ensure a solution is implemented following the data analysis

• Cons

• • • Researchers may be reluctant to sign due to it creating more complications for them
    • Involving a third party may create discourse
    • If no productive knowledge is gained then time and resources are wasted regardless

Step 5: Seek additional assistance, as appropriate – engineering codes of ethics, previous cases, peers, reliance on personal experience, inner reflection

• • Engineering Code of Ethics

Step 6: Select the best course of action – that which satisfies the highest core ethical values. Explain reasoning and justify. Discuss your stance vis-a-vis other approaches discussed in the class.

  After long, thoughtful, and insightful consideration, we concur that a combination of solution 1 and 3 would be best fit. Solution 1 addresses the community members that the researchers will be working with, making sure they feel respected and compensating them for their time and knowledge. While it may be slightly more costly and require more effort, ethically, the community members deserve to be treated fairly. Furthermore, this could positively impact the economy in the local area as it will create small job opportunities. Solution 3 addresses the issue of potential Hit-And-Run research by requiring the research team to be contractually obligated to pass along any productive information to an appropriate organization who would implement the possible chemical additive solution. This could be leveraged by the funding agencies refusing to provide a portion or all of the funding if this addendum is not met. This way you are addressing ethical issues from the beginning to the end of the research. 

Since we agreed that a combination of two solutions was best, we only can compare them to Solution 2. This solution proposed a holding a  seminar for community members to gauge who is interested in water safety. By no means is this a bad option, it just seemed less direct in solving our ethical issues and did not address the risk of the study being Hit-And-Run. For this reason it seemed to be less effective.

Step 7: (If applicable) What are the implications of your solution on the venture. Explain the impact of your proposed solution on the venture’s technology, economic, social and environmental aspects

The implications of solutions are mostly economic and social. It will cost the venture more to pay the local community members for their assistance but this in turn will produce a good social impact where our venture has a better relationship with the communities that it is researching in. Technologically, the treatment plan for the pathogen could result in future technological advances, as researchers will have more information about this particular pathogen’s life cycle. If a treatment plan is successfully implemented, the environment would possibly benefit from the drinkable water that has less harmful pathogens.