• Deceit (The Moral Fault): Deceit involves deliberately misleading participants about the nature of the research, withholding information, or providing false data. It violates the principle of Informed Consent.

• Patience (A Virtue): Social research often involves long-term observation, complex data collection, and slow human interactions. Patience is a necessary professional trait to ensure data is collected accurately without rushing or forcing results.

• Knowledge (A Prerequisite): Possessing knowledge is the primary goal and requirement of research. It is neither a fault nor a virtue in the moral sense, but rather a professional competency.

• Purity (Moral Integrity): In a research context, purity usually refers to the "purity of data" or the "purity of intention," meaning the researcher remains unbiased and uncorrupted by external pressures.

Additional Knowledge:

Ethical conduct in social research is primarily governed by several core principles designed to protect the "subjects" (human participants) and the "science" itself:

• Integrity vs. Fabrication: A moral fault often discussed alongside deceit is fabrication (making up data) or falsification (altering data to fit a hypothesis).

• The Principle of Non-Maleficence: This is the ethical obligation to "do no harm." Deceit can often lead to psychological harm or loss of trust in the scientific community.

• The Belmont Report: This is a foundational document for ethical research. It outlines three key pillars: Respect for Persons (autonomy), Beneficence (minimizing harms/maximizing benefits), and Justice (fair distribution of research burdens).

• Institutional Review Boards (IRB): Most social research must be approved by an IRB to ensure that moral faults like deceit are minimized and that the benefits of the study outweigh any potential ethical risks.