Criminal Behavior and How to Discussion Chapter

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Criminology is not an abstract discipline. It is designed to have real world, real-life implications and thus must be undertaken with care. However, human beings' behavior cannot be perfectly controlled, and no experiment conducted in the field can be isolated from variables that may potentially affect the results, even with the inclusion of a control group. A faulty experiment could have far-reaching effects.

Beyond the ethics of studying crime, there are also methodological questions. What branch of the social sciences does criminology encompass? Psychology? The natural sciences? Sociology? History? This question influences the assumptions, patterns, and standards of evidence to which research is held. It has been said that the "paradigm for criminology should not be tied to any particular discipline" because of its multidisciplinary nature (Laub 2006: 240). However, this means that creating a universally agreed-upon body of ethical standards can be extremely difficult. The standards of falsifiability and rigorous scientific evidence may be different in the eyes of a qualitative researcher with a background in sociology vs. A scientist studying the neurology of the brain and genetic factors associated with criminology.

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This lack of a universal code of ethics may make criminology even more apt to fall into the dangers of theoreticism (the desire of researchers to confirm existing theory) and territorialism (or the desire to protect their discipline as superior) even though its multidisciplinary nature should theoretically make it less vulnerable to these problems.

There are no easy answers to these questions. At minimum, every researcher must weigh the potential costs of doing the research in terms of the impact to the population vs. The positive benefits of doing research, including the dissemination of knowledge. Additional scrutiny must be applied to research on juveniles and when conflicting ethical paradigms arise regarding the methodology of different types of research in the field, researchers should always err on the side of caution......

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