 During this module, we will be looking at ethical principles that why ethical principles are important and to whom we fix the responsibility of implementing these ethical principles. The general ethical principles constitutes the main domain of responsibility within which ethical issues are concerned. So it's very important to understand that ethical principle car first and foremost purpose is to fix a responsibility because as a result of this, we are determining that if any individual is following an ethical principle, he must be behaving in that setup as a responsible individual. The method in which they apply and the context in which they apply, they will inevitably change over the period of time. You can well understand this by example that if we determine a responsibility in a specific scenario, then it may not be the same for us in every context in every scenario. Over the period of time, right to information has become a law and in every institution of a government, there is a column on a specific website which states that all your policies, all your procedures, all your laws and by-laws, they should be open to everyone. Few years back, it was not like that. For a small rule, in many offices, in many departments, we had to access a small information through channels. But these days, we see that principles have changed, rules have changed, so it is no more an issue to get access to any kind of information. So similarly, over the period of time, there are many other things which has been changed. There are different procedures, medical procedures, which have never been done by doctors, different ethical and moral values, because of which many treatment procedures were not openly opened to the patients, but these days, we tend to see that you can see live surgeries. So it means that context is important. The time duration is important, so according to the major principle, it comes into different domains and shapes, and it can change over the period of time. The existence of these ethical principles contribute to achieve the aim in scientific research, knowledge, honesty and error avoidance. Now the very principle which we are working on is that whatever the research, the scientific knowledge we are engaged into, there are at least chances of human error, there are at least biases, and moreover, work with honesty. At times, transparency is very important to honesty. At times, you see that honesty can be just in a way where the things are not transparent. While in certain circumstances, we need to be very open to other people that what process we have followed. So the very sense, the connotation, the context, it inevitably changed over the principle and over the period of time. For example, prohibition to falsify and misinterpret research data promotes fairness and helps to avoid mistakes. Basic definitions describing misconduct in science are fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. Now by fabrication we need to say for instance, a person is being given placebo for a very long time whereas that drug, that placebo is not going to give any benefit to the person because it has no medical properties, but we are portraying it, we are fabricating it that this is for your good mental health, so that is fabrication. And falsification is that, for instance, many people used to say that a flu shot can be a very good protection against COVID. So it's falsification, it's not truth, it's not scientifically proven. So at times the fabrication and falsification has been used as if this is scientific knowledge and plagiarism is the third thing in which you are going to publish something which is being already written by someone else, which is being said by someone else and you are going to portray that thing as that is being contained by you. So in those cases where you are going to digitize the work of other people, where you are going to fabricate the scientific research, where you are going to falsify the research evidences in all such conditions, it is very important to fix the responsibility. So the very first principle responsibility further contains different sub-domains, which is principle A, beneficence and non-beneficence, we are going to talk in detail in further lectures about what does it means and what examples it carries. Principle B is fidelity and responsibility, principle C is integrity, principle four is justice, principle five is respect for people's right and dignity. So each principle is described in statement of values, you know justice has some values, you know respect has some values, you know our nasty has some values, so each of these connotations contains some kind of the value in itself. And we show different manifestations of all these, reflecting the fundamental beliefs that guide ethical reasoning, without those beliefs we can't just give ethical reasoning. If we don't have the feeling that after using an animal in an experiment, we have to properly rehabilitate it and close that experiment, so we are just going to see brain dissection, we will see it and we will just spin it. This is not going to be an ethically possible rule for a scientist to harm it in the dissection process with any animal. So for you know ensuring these principles to human and animals and all the subjects which are related to research, these principles carry a specific value and it has some weight. For decision making and behavior, if we just simply neglect all these values, would it be possible for us to have certain kind of decision making which is beneficial for us, certainly not. It would not be possible for us to have positive decision making, concrete decision making and to show socially appropriate behavior. Under each principle we list issues and considerations that psychologists should be aware of in applying the principle in their work. So to sum up this, this is very important for the progress of a psychologist, for a progress of a researcher that in each of the domain, each of the principle they have to apply their best of the knowledge of these values into their working.