Will my results still be publishable if I used ethically objectionable techniques in my research At the moment I am involved in a neurobiology research trying to assess the feasibility of using emotional response to elicit distinct EEG (brain wave) patterns from the brain using static images. Distinct brain waves can be used as control signals to perform distinct actions traditionally done using a remote controller (i.e. flipping through the channels).

Conventionally, people have tried using different images such as a flower or a tiger,  a spaceship or a musician in attempt to trigger different responses. The team believes that these input stimulus are too "lite" to produce consistent and reliable results. We wish to investigate whether pornographic images, or images depicting violence, death will produce even stronger responses. Nothing too wild, but definitely involves things that people do not talk about while doing these kind of research.

Since there are a dearth of publications on this technique for eliciting EEG, the best way for us to meet the deadline is to go ahead with these "non-traditional" trials. On the one hand I think my project supervisor will be shocked that we have even thought about using these method, or he will reject it out right claiming an ethical issue, but we are hopeful that a small breakthrough may be reached if the team followed through with this experiment.

What should the team do in this case? Should we go through with our experiment and jeopardize our reputation or should we just give up on this train of thought and risk failure by continuing with the methods that are likely not to yield any useful results?
All research involving EEG on human subjects will require IRB, or equivalent ethical review board, approval in order to be published in a reputable journal. Studies involving pornography, violence, and death are not that uncommon and your IRB will have procedures in place to deal with these types of studies. They will likely require you to provide clear information about what the subjects will see during the experiment if it does not impact your hypothesis. They may require you to prescreen subjects for past experiences that may make the images more salient, again if it doesn't interfere with the hypothesis. Finally, if the images are disturbing, they will likely require you to have a support mechanism included in your debrief. Often, if the subjects are limited to students, understanding how to get emergency access to a psychologist is enough. In extreme cases they may require a psychologist to be on site.

NEVER do research without ethical approval. There is nothing in your proposal that sounds so shocking that it should cause a supervisor to think less of you. He/she may not want to go down that road on scientific or personal moral grounds, but you should still feel comfortable raising the idea with your supervisor.