Business Research Ethics
Tina Louise Barker
RES 351
December-Monday, 2014
Benjamin Millard

When Congress started to pass more stringent emissions standards, they started moving more towards biofuels and/or ethanol fuel, with the intent of getting America off the reliance of buying oil from countries that are not friendly towards us or that have terrorists ties, so with that came numerous studies from various research companies on the effects of biofuels. But nobody thought about the Unintended Consequences of the new emission standards. A recent study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), did a research article entitled, “Unintended Consequences of Transportation Carbon Policies: Land-Use, Emissions, and Innovation.” This article discusses the differences between two proposed policies: a National LCFS (Low Carbon Fuel Standards) or CAT (Cap and Trade). Some of the unintended consequences of that it lists under the LCFS policy would be 1) most existing fleet vehicles would not be able to use the ethanol amounts that would be required under the policy. 2) It would create a shift in agriculture. Under their policy it would require an additional 27 to 39 million acres of land to produce the production of energy producing crops. 3) Land use costs would be between $147 million and $693 million. Whereas, under the CAT policy which does not require more ethanol than what is currently being blended. Most current vehicles can safely use the 10% blend that is being used currently. The CAT policy would only acquire additional acreage of 1.2 million acres. The land-use costs would be zero under the CAT policy. They also go on to discuss how policies in biofuel emissions can be very difficult to measure and in order to determine the proper carbon policy you need to know how much carbon each fuel contains. It also breaks down the different incentive methods that the EPA is using to achieve their emission standards under both the LCFS and CAT. The article also goes on to list their methodology used to come up with the information and also includes various charts and graphs to go along with the information leading me to conclude that this research was done in an ethical and unbiased way. Below are a list of guidelines that should be implanted to ensure that research is done correctly and the consequences of what could happen if this guidelines are not followed.
When it comes to the ethical research practices that should be avoided, I would make sure that the researchers and anybody else, (e.g. assistants) have no connections, like stock investments, family/friends working in the said field, to the research being conducted so that there is no perception of any kind of bias or prejudice towards one policy standard or the other. The particular parties involved that could face injuries if the research is done in an unethical manner would be the small trucking companies that have to buy new equipment in order to comply with the new emission standards. This would have the effect of making the companies either go out of business or forego buying additional equipment and/or hiring more employees. Another party involved would be the economically challenged because if their existing vehicles are not able to use the new blended fuel, they would not have the financial ability to purchase either a new vehicle or get the existing one converted. When it comes to society, organizations, and individuals that could be affected by the adverse effects caused by unethical behaviors, would be farmers and manufacturers of biofuels. Farmers would be affected because if the results are tainted that could mean a lot of extra planting on energy producing crops, which would bring the cost of the crops down and eventually end up not being profitable for them, leading them to eventually selling their land to developers, creating additional hardships and expenses for everybody. Society would be affected by the loss of crops that are planted for food consumption in the United States, which would mean more importing from countries which would increase the likelihood of tainted food either by accident or by a terrorist act. The way it would affect manufacturers of biofuels is if new plants are built based on bad research than it would cause these plants to go bankrupt and lead to loss of jobs. One of the ways to avoid unethical behavior if found to be occurring is to monitor it or resolve it by being as transparent and as open as possible with the figures and the methods used so that others can see the steps that where involved in getting the answers and having another independent research facility double check the research.

References:
Holland, S.P, Hughes, J.E, Knittel, C.R, & Parker, N.C (2013, November). Unintended consequences of transportation carbon policies: Land-use, emissions, and innovations. National Bureau of Economic Research. (19636).