9.5 Research Ethics and Plagiarism

Research ethics (the framework — the Helsinki-spirit code, fieldwork's version):1. Informed consent — participants know the study's purpose, uses and risks, and may refuse or withdraw (special care: children, the illiterate — oral consent witnessed; the covert-research debate: deception justified only when no alternative and harm minimal);2. Do no harm (the fieldwork's first command — physical, social, political: research that exposes a witchcraft accusation's informants, a migrant's documents, a refugee's location harms; data protection as ethics — anonymisation, secure storage, the small-village problem where everyone knows everyone — "thick anonymisation" where needed);3. Privacy and confidentiality (identity disguised — names, places changed with a note when necessary);4. Reciprocity and fair return (payment debated — compensation without buying answers; help given honestly; the departure's debts — 9.1's dilemma);5. Honesty in reporting (negative results, disconfirming cases, the observer's errors — reflexivity as ethics);6. Institutional review (the ethics boards of universities and research councils — Nepal's own review regimes for health and social research);7. Research with vulnerable groups (the Dalit informants, trafficking survivors, detainees — the added protections). Plagiarism (the academic's own criminal law):8. Definition: presenting another's words, ideas, data or structure as one's own — the theft of intellectual property and the fraud of credential;9. The forms (the exam's list):verbatim copying without quote/quotation marks; paraphrase plagiarism (the idea reused with new words, unattributed…