Ethics

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Ethics Scientific ResearchOctober 2014
Clark Wolf Iowa State University jwcwolf_at_iastate.e
du
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Ethics in Science?

• Macro-Ethics Social/Ethical issues in research
  and the development of new technologies

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Ethics in Science?

• Ethical issues in the uses of new technologies

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Ethics in Science?

• Ethical issues involved in the policies that
  regulate the uses of new technology

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• Many moral objections to science and technology
  are silly.
• Does this mean that its silly to consider
  ethical issues in science and technology?

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Ethics in Science?

• Ethical issues in the practice of scientific
  research (RCR)

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I. Ethics in Life Science Research

• 1) Why should you Care?
• 2) Standards for Scientific Research
• FFP MIM
• 3) Ethics, Values, and Choices
• 4) Controversial Case Arsenate Bacteria
• 5) Risk Factors for Research Misconduct?
• 6) Case Studies and Questions

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Why should you be interested?

• Good science requires ethically responsible
  research practice.
• There are good reasons behind the rules governing
  the responsible conduct of research.
• Within the scientific community, ethical
  misconduct is taken very seriously. Misconduct
  can be a career-ending disaster.

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MRS Bulletin, Feb 2002
From Comstock ppt What is Ethics?
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From Comstock ppt What is Ethics?
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Goodwin Case
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(No Transcript)
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Question

• Why would a smart person do something so stupid?

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What is Responsible Research? What are the
Standards of Research Ethics, Where do they Come
From, and Why Should Anyone Comply with them?
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The standards of research ethics are rules and
principles of conduct that apply to scientists
engaged in the practice of research. They
include conventional standards, professional
codes, legal rules, and requirements of
morality.
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Standards of Scientific Misconduct

• Charles Babbage, 1830 Reflections on the
  Decline of Science in England
• Trimming Removing data that fails to conform to
  one's hypothesis.
• Cooking Making many measurements and only
  reporting those deemed satisfactory.
• Forging Recording fictitious results.

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Standards of Scientific Misconduct

• "FFP" Standard "Scientific misconduct means
  fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or
  other practices that seriously deviate from those
  that are commonly accepted within the scientific
  community for proposing, conducting, or
  reporting research. It does not include honest
  error or honest differences in interpretation or
  judgments of data."

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Standards of Scientific Misconduct MIM
Misappropriation, Interference, and
Misrepresentation

• "Research misconduct means significant
  misbehavior that improperly appropriates the
  intellectual property or contributions of others,
  that intentionally impedes the progress of
  research, or that risks corrupting the
  scientific record or compromising the integrity
  of scientific practices. Such behaviors are
  unethical and unacceptable in proposing,
  conducting, or reporting research, or in
  reviewing proposals or research reports of
  others."
• Ryan Report, 1995

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Whats Missing?

• FFP and MIM each capture some important
  categories of scientific misconduct. But they
  are inappropriately focused only on issues of
  intellectual property and the protection of the
  integrity of research itself.
• There are other aspects of scientific practice
  that should be subject to standards of proper
  conduct

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Categories of Scientific Misconduct

• 1.0 Truth Telling
• 1.1 In research (Ex Accurate reporting of
  research results)
• 1.2 In self-representation (Ex Resumes and
  Credentials)
• 2.0 Prohibition on Intellectual Theft
• 2.1 Plagiarism
• 2.2 Citation Ethics
• 2.3 Authorship Credit
• 3.0 Conflicts of Interest Funding Sources, bias
• 3.1Concealment of Relevant Data
• 3.2 Requests for Misrepresentation
• 3.3 Funding-Source Interests Entering the
  Research Process
• 4.0 Treatment of Research Subjects
• 4.1 Informed Consent and Human Subjects
• 4.2 Humane and Appropriate Treatment of Animal
  Subjects
• 5.0 Conflicts between scientific aims and other
  ethically relevant aims.
• 5.1 Imposition of social or environmental
  risks
• 5.2 Sexism or Racism in the sciences
• 5.2 Student/Mentor relations
• 6.0 ???

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Upshot

• In the context of scientific research, it is
  important to understand the principles that
  govern the proper conduct of research.
• You should critically and reflectively consider
  the basis for these principles, and the reasons
  behind them.
• When people fail to abide by them, the
  consequences are drastic and often
  disproportional.

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How could Smart People do something so Stupid?

• Ethical choices often arise in the process of
  scientific research.
• When people are not ready, if these issues catch
  them by surprise, they sometimes make terrible
  mistakes. (Even intelligent and well-meaning
  people!)

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Ethics and the Responsible Conduct of Research

• One aim of this session is to prepare you for
  choices that you will surely face in the course
  of your career as a student, researcher,
  scientist, or engineer.

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Ethics and the Responsible Conduct of Research

• Example Plagiarism and Authorship.
• When, and in what form, is it permissible to use
  the work of others in ones own research?
• Plagiarism Hand-Out
• Bloggs Hand-Out

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Bloggs Case 1
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Bloggs Case 1

• Utilitarianism The ethical thing to do is
  whatever will maximize aggregate benefit for
  everyone.
• The Greatest Good for the
• Greatest Number (GHGN)

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Bloggs Case 2
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Rights

• Would slicing and dicing Bloggs violate his
  rights? (What are rights?)

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Rights?

• Response Slicing and dicing Bloggs would violate
  his rights.
• A moral right is a justified claim that an
  individual (or group) may make to certain objects
  or certain treatment by others.
• Bloggss right to X may take the form of
• A claim that Bloggs may make to a particular
  object (e.g., his kidneys)
• A constraint on how Bloggs should be treated
  (e.g., he shouldnt be killed for his organs)
• An obligation on others not to interfere with
  Bloggss doing X (e.g., his continuing to live)

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Ethical Theory

• Immanuel Kant Categorical Imperative
• Act only such that you could will the maxim on
  which you act as a universal law.
• Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your
  own person or that of another, always as an end
  in itself, and never as a means only.
• Would slicing and dicing Bloggs for his organs
  involve treating him as a mere means?

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Ethical Theory

• Killing v. Letting Die It has sometimes been
  argued that we have a moral duty not to kill, but
  no moral duty (or a lighter moral duty) not to
  let people die.
• Does this distinction explain why we shouldnt
  kill Bloggs for his organs?

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Bloggs Case 3
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Bloggs Case 3

• The ethics of acts vs. omissions
• The greater good vs. clean hands

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Ethical Theory

• We reveal our ethical views when we explain or
  justify our choices and behavior to others.
• Ethical views can be thoughtless and
  unreflective, or thoughtful and reflective. To
  the extent that were thoughtless and
  unreflective, our value system will lack
  integrity and depth.
• If our values are shallow and incoherent, we will
  make bad decisions, and we will be shallow and
  incoherent. (?)

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Ethics in Science

• No one (?) pursues a career in science planning
  or expecting to perpetrate scientific misconduct.

• By considering the motives and pressures that
  lead people to perpetrate misconduct, we can
  prepare ourselves in advance to make good
  decisions.

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Hard Cases

• Fraud and misconduct are in one sense easy cases
  people know theyre doing the wrong thing when
  they fake the data.

• Are there ethically problematic cases at the
  margin where people can fall into misconduct
  without realizing that this is what theyve done?

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A Story The Baltimore Case

• April 1986 Publication by David Baltimore,
  Thereza Imanishi-Kari, et al. of a paper titled
  
• "Altered Repertoire of Endogenous
  Immunoglobulin Gene Expression in Transgenic Mice
  Containing a Rearranged Mu Heavy Chain Gene"
• The article appeared in the journal Cell.

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The Baltimore Case

• May 1986 Margot O'Toole, Imanishi-Kari's
  postdoctoral assistant at MIT, found that she
  could not duplicate Imanishi-Kari's data.
• OToole wasted(?) a year demonstrating that
  important experiments in the paper were wrong.

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The Baltimore Case

• Frustrated, in May 1986 OToole decided to blow
  the whistle. She took the facts to her thesis
  adviser. She also contacted two scientists at
  Tufts University, which was about to hire
  Imanishi-Kari.
• COMMENT What should you do if you suspect
  misconduct on the part of someone in your lab?
  It is important to insure that the rights of
  those you suspect are protected, even if you
  know them to be guilty of misconduct.
• Due Process rights.

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The Baltimore Case

• The hiring committee at Tufts was concerned
  enough to ask Imanishi-Kari for proof of the work
  she'd done.
• On perusal of her notes they did not decide to
  act on O'Toole's concerns. Tufts hired
  Imanishi-Kari.
• (US Secret Service later said that these notes
  were fabricated just before the meeting.)

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The Baltimore Case

• June 1986 O'Toole confronted Imanishi-Kari.
• According to O'Toole, Imanishi-Kari admitted
  that some of the work cited in the paper was not
  done, and other work got different results than
  what was reported.

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The Baltimore Case

• O'Toole asked that the paper be withdrawn.
• David Baltimore replied that such problems with
  accuracy are not unusual and need not be
  corrected.
• A startling new standard for scientific
  inquiry? --Elliot Stern, p. 46.

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The Baltimore Case

• September 1986 Dean at MIT assigned Herman
  Eisen to look at the case. Eisen noted that there
  were errors in the Cell paper but that this was
  "the stuff of science" and not misconduct.
• (ES p. 46)

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The Baltimore Case

• Eisen received a letter from David Baltimore
• "The evidence that the Bet-1 antibody doesn't
  do as described in the paper is clear. Thereza
  Imanishi-Kari's statement to you that she knew
  it all the time is a remarkable admission of
  guilt... Why Thereza chose to use this data and
  to mislead both of us and those who read the
  paper is beyond me.

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The Baltimore Case

• All authors do have to take responsibility
  for a manuscript, so all of us are in some sense
  culpable, but I would hate to see David
  Weaver's integrity questioned for something he
  accepted in good faith... The literature is full
  of bits and pieces now known to be wrong, but it
  is not the tradition to point each one out
  publicly."
• He went on to say that no correction should be
  published but that he would privately let others
  know that Imanishi-Kari's data "are not reliable,
  and I for one, will be skeptical of Thereza's
  work in the future. (ES p. 47.)

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The Baltimore Case

• Questionable standards represented in
  Baltimores letter to Eisen?
• (Attitudes concerning misconduct were different
  at the time when Baltimore wrote this letter.
  Does this mitigate the fault he might incur from
  involvement in a cover-up?)

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The Baltimore Case

• July 1986 Walter Stewart and Ned Feder at NIH
  started examining the case, and spoke to John
  Dingle, Chair of the House Subcommittee on
  Oversight and Investigations. There is no one
  whose job it is to investigate possible cases of
  scientific fraud.
• NIH appointed a special committee to investigate
  the matter.

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The Baltimore Case

• Summer 1986 Baltimore took steps to mobilize
  the scientific community to defend Imanishi-Kari
  against the NIH investigation. He mobilized
  colleagues to write op-ed pieces and to join the
  fray. A large group of distinguished scientists
  went to Washington on his behalf.
• Baltimore "cast the conflict as one of outsiders
  invading the sanctuary of science.
• --ES, p. 48

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The Baltimore Case

• October 1994 NIH Office of Research Integrity
  (ORI) ruled that Imanishi-Kari falsified data and
  should be barred from receiving NIH grants or
  contracts for a 10 year period.
• Secret Service experts provide evidence that
  notebooks provided by Imanishi-Kari's as evidence
  of her innocence were, some of them, prepared
  shortly before being given to the ORI.

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The Baltimore Case

• There is evidence that
• Imanishi-Kari threw out data that did not conform
  to her hypothesis
• that the dates on the lab notebooks were wrong
  they have Imanishi-Kari using equipment that was
  not yet in the lab, and have dates that do not
  conform to the radiation counter tapes fixed to
  her lab books.
• Secret Service found that 20 percent of
  Imanishi-Kari's material showed evidence of being
  faked.

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The Baltimore Case

• 1994-1996 Imanishi-Kari pursued the appeals
  process, continuing to argue that she was sloppy
  and wrong, not dishonest and deliberately
  deceptive.

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The Baltimore Case

• June 1996 Department of Health and Human
  Services review panel ruled that Imanishi-Kari is
  not guilty of the misconduct allegations.

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The Baltimore Case

• Where are they now?
• Imanishi Kari Still at Tufts.
• OToole Science writer
• Baltimore President of Cal Tech

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Another Recent Case

• Whang Woo-Suk
• South Korean scientist who quickly became very
  famous for brilliant work on stem cell and
  cloning research.
• First cloned dog Snuppy.

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Another Recent Case

• Whang Woo-Suk
• First questions were raised about the origin of
  research materials, which were found to have been
  donated by people within Whangs lab. This
  violated international regulatory guidelines for
  such research.

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Another Recent Case

• Whang Woo-Suk
• Then questions arose about the research itself.
• Under pressure, Whang admitted that substantial
  portions of his most celebrated research were
  faked.

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Why would Anyone Commit Scientific Fraud?

• Reputation?
• Publication and promotion?
• To Get a Job or a Grant?

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(No Transcript)
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• "There are undoubtedly many reasons why people
  choose to become scientists. Simple greed,
  however, is not high on the list."
• -David Goodstein, "Inside Science,"
• American Scholar, Autumn 1999.
• www.its.caltech.edu/dg/science_art.html

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Risk Factors for Misconduct David Goodstein

• 1. Ambition and career pressure.
• 2. Researchers know, or think that they know
  what the answer would turn out to be if they went
  to all the trouble of doing the work properly.
• 3. Work is being done in a field where individual
  experiments are not expected to be precisely
  reproducible.
• SOURCE David Goodstein, Scientific
  Misconduct ACADEME 2002.
• www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2002/02jfgoo.ht
  m

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Career Pressure

• Career Pressure does not uniquely identify a
  group as more prone to misconduct All
  scientists are under career pressure.

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Knowing the Answer (Or thinking you do)

• Knowing the Answer Those who commit
  scientific fraud are rarely people who
  self-consciously intend to falsify the scientific
  record.

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Reproducibility of Experiments

• Experiments are seldom repeated by others.
  When a wrong result is found out, it is almost
  always because new work based on the wrong result
  doesn't proceed as expected. The belief that
  someone may repeat one's experiments is a strong
  disincentive for fraud, but this disincentive
  seems to be less effective in the biosciences
  where different research results may often be
  explained by differences in experimental
  circumstances, and especially where live
  organisms are used as research subjects.
  Variability among individual organisms might
  provide some apparent cover for a biologist
  tempted to cheat.
• -Goodstein, Scientific Misconduct.

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• Clark Wolf
• Director of Bioethics
• Iowa State University
• jwcwolf_at_iastate.edu

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Science, Ethics, and Graduate Study

• Common Issues and Concerns for Graduate Students
  
• Mentor/Student interaction
• Credit where credit is due
• Ownership of data
• Plagiarism and Responsibility

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Case 1 Data from a Graduate CourseSocial Science

• You are a graduate student taking a course with
  Professor Teacher. In this course, Prof. Teacher
  gives the class some data from his/her ongoing
  research as illustrations. You are told to use
  some of this data in your course assignments. In
  doing so, you notice that the trends in this data
  have some interesting implications for other
  research you did with Professor Study and are now
  writing up. You want to use some of Prof.
  Teachers data in your article to draw out these
  new implications.
• Whom, if anyone, do you approach about this, how
  do you approach him or her, and what do you say?
• Case Data from a Graduate CourseSocial Science
• Source http//onlineethics.org/reseth/mod/profdat
  a.html
• Based on an idea by Gary Deimling.

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Case 2 Changing the Procedure

• by Caroline Whitbeck, Ph.D.
• based on an idea of Arun Patel Ravi Patil, MIT
  '93
• You area member of a group of graduate students
  working on a large project. The results from your
  group's experiment are used for other experiment
  in the project. Your faculty supervisor, the
  principal investigator (PI) for the project,
  wants you to use a new procedure for your
  experimental work. The PI expects that the new
  procedure will yield results that are better
  suited to the experimental conditions of the
  other experimental work. The other students in
  your group do not wish to change the procedure.
  It will require more work and they think both
  that the PI will be impatient with the resulting
  delay, and that she will not notice if the old
  procedure is used.
• You rely on the group for assistance for your
  own thesis work, so you want to deal tactfully
  with them, but you believe that if you use the
  old procedure, the quality of the data will
  suffer and you will mislead the PI and perhaps
  the entire scientific community.
• You argue for using the new procedure and
  explaining to the PI that it will just take
  longer, but the rest of the group is not
  persuaded.
• What do you do and how do you go about it?

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Case 3 Whose Data Is It?

• Maie ElKassaby was a PhD student in the lab of
  Dr. Jeffrey Williams, a microbiologist at
  Michigan State University. ElKassaby was working
  on a project supported by Williams NIH grant, in
  collaboration with scientists at UpJohn Co. and
  physicians in the Sudan. Following a series of
  disagreements, Williams withdrew his support as
  ElKassaby's PhD advisor. ElKassaby filed a
  grievance against Williams and removed the tissue
  samples and data she had accumulated on the
  project.
• Although an inquiry found the grievance against
  Williams to be groundless, ElKassaby continued
  to refuse to return the lab data to Williams.
  Associate dean Justin McCormick pointed out that
  the university has an obligation to protect
  student interests as well as faculty
  prerogatives. He described the situation as a
  divorce in which the parties are seeking fair
  distribution of joint property. Under the
  guidance of MSU officials, ElKassaby was
  provided with three faculty advisors who helped
  her write up her sequestered data for
  publication, in spite of protests from Williams
  and the UpJohn collaborators.
• Jeffrey Williams, Sr professor of Microbiology
  v. Maie ElKassaby, Michigan State U. 1989.

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Case 3 Whose Data Is It?

• Williams was (wrongly) advised by Alan Price
  that "sequestering data is not misconduct," it's
  an internal affair, "but if the data are
  published, that is plagiarism." Looking at
  standard definitions of "scientific misconduct,"
  Price may have been correct. (This in itself
  provides good reason for revisions like those
  adopted by the Ryan Comission!) The paper was
  eventually published with ElKassaby as sole
  author, at which point Williams filed charges of
  scientific misconduct against ElKassaby and the
  MSU administrator and faculty involved in the
  preparation of the article.
• Both MSU and NIH began independent
  investigations of Williams' allegations. The NIH
  panel in the end censored ElKassaby for her
  refusal to "permit access by collaborators and
  the PI to primary research materials and data,"
  citing the refusal as a "breach of accepted
  scientific practice" and "therefore an act of
  scientific misconduct."
• (from Elliot, Deni, and Sterns, Judy E. 1997.
  Research Ethics A Reader, Institute for Applied
  and Professional Ethics, Pub. p. 211)

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Case 3 Whose Data Is It?

• Both MSU and NIH began independent investigations
  of Williams' allegations. The NIH panel in the
  end censored ElKassaby for her refusal to "permit
  access by collaborators and the PI to primary
  research materials and data," citing the refusal
  as a "breach of accepted scientific practice" and
  "therefore an act of scientific misconduct."
• (Elliot Deni, and Sterns, Judy E. 1997. Research
  Ethics A Reader, Institute for Applied and
  Professional Ethics, Pub. p. 211)