Research Ethics

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Research Ethics

• Sheng Zhong
• 10/02/2006

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The study of Ethics
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The study of Ethics

• Understand professional expectations
• Examine basis for conventional behavior
• To getincreased consciousness ethical action

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Compliance vs. Ethics

• Both necessary for the conduct of responsible
  research
• Compliance means that investigators and
  institutions follow the rules that are set out
  for them.
• Ethics know the rules and motivated to follow
  the rules

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Ethical behavior

• More than simply following the rules
• The study of how human action affects other
  humans, sentient beings, or the ecosystem
• Potential of causing harm and the potential of
  promoting good

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Research Misconduct

• Fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in
  proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or
  in reporting research results. It does not
  include honest error or honest differences in
  interpretations or judgments of data.

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• Fabrication Making up data or results and
  recording or reporting them as factual results.
• Falsification Manipulating research materials,
  equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting
  data or results such that the research is not
  accurately represented in the research record.

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• Plagiarism The appropriation of another person's
  ideas, processes, results, or words without
  giving appropriate credit, including those
  obtained through confidential review of others'
  research proposals and manuscripts.

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Research Integrity Officer

• Institutional official responsible for assessing
  allegations of research misconduct. The Research
  Integrity Officer at most institutions, is the
  Vice President for Research, or that person's
  designee.

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Legally Required

• This terminology is used in the course to
  differentiate actions that are merely in
  compliance (legally required) from those actions
  that are ethically permitted.

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General Morality

• General morality dictates that it is not
  acceptable to cause pain, death, disability, or
  deprive someone of freedom or pleasure without
  justification. General morality also requires
  that acts of deception, cheating,
  promise-breaking, law-breaking and neglect of
  responsibility be considered examples of
  wrongdoing unless there is justification for the
  acts.

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• Ethically Prohibited Actions that are contrary
  to those required by general morality or by
  reasonable expectations within the research
  community and are not justifiable. People are
  blameworthy for acting in ethically prohibited
  ways.
• Ethically Permitted Actions that are consistent
  with those required by general morality and by
  reasonable expectations within the research
  community. It is ethically permitted to do more
  than follow minimal rules and regulations.

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• Ethically Required Actions that follow from the
  special role-related responsibilities of being a
  researcher. It is ethically required that
  researchers be in compliance with federal and
  institutional rules and regulations.
• Ethically Encouraged Actions that are ethically
  permitted and, in addition, are intended to
  lessen suffering or lessen the risk of suffering
  harms.

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Case Study I

• Repeat the experiment (at a cost of approximately
  6 months, 300 animals, and 40,000)
• Attempt to publish the findings omitting the
  questionable samples
• Assign the two samples to their likely groups and
  publish the statistically significant and
  convincing results.

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• Repeating the experiment is an ethically
  permitted and ethically encouraged approach. One
  of the role related responsibilities of
  scientists is to achieve accurate reproducible
  results. Whatever the reasons, unless the
  experiment is repeated, Dr. Leyos cannot attest
  that the results are accurate or reproducible.

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• However, the grant that funded this project did
  not budget for repeat of the experiment. So while
  Dr. Leyos wants to repeat the experiment, he must
  now decide among a number of courses of action.
• Take 40,000 already approved by the funding
  agency to support a post-doctoral student and use
  that money to cover the additional experiment.
• Apply for other funding to repeat the experiment.
  In the proposal, Dr. Leyos explains that the
  results are currently just shy of statistical
  significance, but does not give details about the
  earlier problems.
• Explain the problems that have occurred to the
  funders and request additional funds to support
  the testing required for statistical
  significance.