On Thursday, Sept. 24 Helen Harton, graduate coordinator and professor of psychology at UNI, held a workshop on social responsibility in research with six participants. The seminar was held online with Harton doing her best to make technology her best friend.

Although she had her doubts about presenting online, Professor Harton decided to go ahead with it, stating, “this is the first one of these that I have done on Zoom. I was a little nervous about doing it on Zoom because normally it is face to face because it is interactive and we’re talking and sometimes that is a little more difficult with Zoom.”

The seminar talked a lot about basic research processes such as harms, benefits, confidentiality, consent and risks. They also focused on human participant research as well the relationship between researchers and their social responsibilities trying to find the answers to big questions like ‘If you create the atomic bomb and someone uses it to kill a bunch of people, is it your fault even though you never killed anyone, only created the device?’

Harton’s aim through the workshop was to make researchers more aware of their actions and purpose.

“As scientists, you have the obligations to conduct research honestly and accurately and share your results with others in a clear and understandable way,” she states. “You also have an obligation to know what to do, but you also need to push yourself during hard or stressful times to actually do what should be done.”