Mary Johnson, a doctoral student in educational psychology, is researching the e

Question

Mary Johnson, a doctoral student in educational psychology, is researching the effectiveness of various interventions recommended to help children with learning disabilities improve their reading skill. One particularly intriguing approach is an interactive software system that uses analogy-based phonics.

Mary contacted the company that developed this software, RSPT Inc., to obtain the system free of charge for use in her research. RSPT Inc. expressed interest in having her compare its product with other intervention strategies and was quite confident that its approach would be the most effective. Not only did the company provide Mary with free software, but RSPT Inc. also generously offered to fund her research with a grant to cover her data collection and analysis costs.

Identify the ethical dilemma in this scenario

What are the undesirable consequences

Explanation / Answer

The scenario consists of ethical dillema for Mary Johnson, who definitely got the software for free usage in her research but got indirectly tied with the burden of concluding RSPt software the best one compare to its' competitors.

In the begining of accepting the offer by RSPT, Mary would have avoided the dillema by citing that she would come up with the true result only, whatever be the favor offered to her by RSTP.

Undesirably Mary could declare the free software by RSTP as the best one, which might be or might not be in reality. This would further lead to misleading conclusion regarding effectiveness of variou sinterventions recommended to help children with learning disabilities improve their reading skill.

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