Right or Wrong?

Submitted by bjdunfor on Mon, 04/13/2009 - 12:58

I believe that the biggest problem in terms of ethics for the white paper will be copyright laws. Since we are using lots of information taken from the internet we must cite our sources properly and make sure to follow the rules dealing with copyright laws. Plagiarism, which is copyright infringement where you use someone else’s text, tends to be a problem commonly involved with online researching and can have very serious consequences since it is in fact enforceable by law. I don’t think that I will have any problems with personal ethics while doing anything in this class, because people in our age group should be able to tell what is right and what is wrong in terms of these ethics. Some people might question my personal ethics based on the instruction assignment because they feel that guns are bad ethically. I personally feel that there is nothing wrong with liking guns because I do not use them to harm anyone and I know a lot about them so I am safe while using them. Social ethics are further broken down into: rights, justice, utility, and care. These are very important things to think about when working in groups to insure fairness throughout a project or group activity. When working on the white paper or any other project we have done in this class conservation ethics have never really came into play. I don’t think anything I have done in this class has concerned the ecosystem or anything like that because I haven’t even printed much paper or used much energy when working on this class. Our whitepaper might actually help conservation ethics indirectly because we are trying to help people decided what kind of wind turbine to purchase in order to save energy. Towards the end of the reading there are multiple questions to ask to resolve an ethical dilemma. These various questions can help you make your decision on whether you are doing the right thing in terms of ethics.

Myriad of Conservation Ethics

jrdavies's picture
Submitted by jrdavies on Mon, 04/13/2009 - 13:33.

I actually think that conservation ethics can play a pretty important role in this class, but not just because wind turbines are a renewable energy source. You said your instructions project was on gun cleaning. What about gun cleaning supplies? Some powder solvents come in aerosol cans, so I'm sure that there's probably some sort of environmental impact associated with them. Are you responsible for letting the reader know about it? I'm not so sure about that. If you were writing about how to do an oil change, however, I think you'd be morally responsible for telling the audience to dispose of the used oil properly. As for wind turbines, what about the resources required to build them? Or how about the birds that they slaughter with their giant blades of doom? I think there are several conservation ethics to consider, but I'm also not entirely sure how many of them we are responsible for presenting to the audience.

Good call.

Submitted by bjdunfor on Mon, 04/13/2009 - 16:42.

I apparently didn't think outside the box when I started writing this reading response and mentioned that I had no conservation ethics involved with my work.. Now that you put it like that there are hidden factors I never even thought about. Like in your example of the project I did about cleaning guns, what I showed on my project may not affect ethics in any way but the hidden things can. I said that there were no conservation ethics but all those cleaning supplies one would use to clean guns can be very harmful to the environment. I never thought about the turbines harming anything either, but like you said the materials to make them come from the earth and the turbines themselves can be harmful to wildlife. Thank you for opening my eyes a little better on this subject.

Misguiding Information

Submitted by estefano on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 04:19.

Another way to lack ethics in a white paper is to provide misguiding information that is specifically crafted to make the reader beleive something that is not true. Examples include providing only points that support an idea or misrepresenting opinions and facts. Sometimes, the authors may straight out lie in the white paper. I think all of these are examples of unethical white papers.

Also, you mentioned "people in our age group should be able to tell what is right and what is wrong in terms of these ethics". I am not sure that I agree with that. All sorts of people of different age groups do unethical things. Think of all the CEO's that are destroying employee pention funds and how old some of them are.