Security in Computing 5th Edition by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Charles P Pfleeger, Jonathan Margulies

Exercise 12

Prepare an argument for or against the proposition that the following is ethical behavior. You are a medical researcher developing a new treatment for a serious condition. You have a drug that has done well in limited trials, but a competitor has a drug that seems more effective. One day you discover the competitor’s network and find, to your amazement, that you can access internal machines, including a machine that seems to have trial results for your competitor’s drug. You carefully change the statistics so that your product compares more favorably. Does the argument change if you change your data, not the competitor’s? Does the argument change if the data concern snake migration patterns?

Step 1 of 3

Ethics of Falsifying Critical Data

The problem speculates on the ethics of Falsifying Critical Data. Medical research and reports are highly confidential data that must be accurate. Modifying such data, especially of that of a competitor is highly illegal and unethical. Also, such false data, particularly in the case of drug trials, are critical not only to the producing company, but also to the patients to whom these drugs will be administered.