ABSTRACT
The problems of ethics, organized research, subject responsibility, value positions, informal demands on the investigator, and a misconception of the subject represent issues that lie at the heart of doing sociology and science in general, yet they are not adequately treated in most methodology texts. This chapter discusses a series of contingencies that may arise during the research process. Ethical absolutism begins with the assumption that one can ascribe to modern Western society a value structure that stresses individual autonomy. The dominant moral theme of this social order is the fundamental right of privacy and autonomy for each individual. From this basic assumption a number of ethical principles can be derived for the social scientist, the first of which is that, he has no right to invade the personal privacy of any individual. Ultimately the sociological analyst must return to the fact that his science represents a human studying fellow humans.
