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Targeted Training in the
Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR)

  VIEW THIS FREE ONLINE COURSE

 

Course Summaries

KEY CONCEPTS

Just as members of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) at research institutions across the US evaluate proposed Human Subjects Research (HSR), so too do members of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) evaluate  Proposed Animal Subjects Research (ASR). One typical and very important facet of IACUC review involves "the 3Rs."

Reduction: this commitment is to reducing the number of animals utilized by scientific research.

Refinement: this commitment is to refining the animal procedures utilized by scientists—e.g., limiting the suffering such procedures cause, or their invasiveness.

Replacement: this commitment is to replacing the use of sentient creatures with non-sentient models, whenever possible, throughout scientific research.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Medical Ethics: Accounts of GroundBreaking Cases (Pence 2015, 7th ed)
  • Responsible Conduct of Research (Shamoo & Resnik 2015, 3rd ed)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Orlans’ (1997) “Ethical Decision Making About Animal Experiments” Ethics Behav 7(2): 163–171.
  • Barnhill, Joffe, and Miller’s (2016) “The Ethics of Infection Challenges in Primates” Hast Cent Rep 46(4): 20–26.
  • Walker’s (2016) “Beyond Primates” Hast Cent Rep 46(4): 28–30.

 

CASES IN THE NEWS

  • Animal Registries—see Monya Baker (2019) writing for Nature
  • Undercover Ops—see Jeffrey Brainard (2006) writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1.  How do potential problems with ASR arise most commonly or significantly for scientific work in your laboratory or research setting?
  2. Which of the 3Rs do you think is most worth considering and pursuing in the design of an ASR study proposal? Can you order them in terms of what you think their relative importance is?
  3. How could your institution’s ASR review process be improved? Consider what additions, removals, or alterations you think ought to be made to the process.
  4. What does the history of animal rights activism and public protest of ASR mean for your research? What about the reputation of research in general?
  5. What do you think of the proposed notion of ASR animal, population, and study registries?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

The 1966 Animal Welfare Act is the original bit of US federal regulation pertaining to ASR populations, regulation, policy, and procedure.

What is commonly called the 1985 "Improved Standards for Laboratory Animals Act" is that bit of later regulation which introduced IACUC review across the country—something developed as a response to action taken by (e.g.) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in the 1980s. This action, and what it exposed,
was widely publicized by those entities, to great effect. But note also that some of that very action taken by members of the ALF and PETA—that which spurred the changes to ASR regulations, leading to widespread IACUC oversight—was shortly afterwards made illegal by the 1989 Farm and Animal Research Facilities Act.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research;  collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of animal subjects research.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

KEY CONCEPTS

There are four common criteria for granting scientific authorship:

  1. Making substantial contributions to either (a) the conception or design of the scientific work or (b) the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data;
  2. Drafting or critically revising the work for important intellectual content;
  3. Giving final approval for the work of the version to be published; and
  4. Agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work—ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of the work be investigated and resolved.

This four-criteria-based pattern for granting scientific authorship follows a policy that was established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in 1985, and which was then picked up by many other scientific organizations and entities. The template recommends that all and only those who meet all four of these  Criteria be granted authorship.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research (Steneck 2007)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Fontanarosa, Bauchner, & Flanagin’s (2017) “Authorship and Team Science” JAMA 318(24): 2433–2437.
  • Faulkes’ (2018) “Resolving authorship disputes by mediation and arbitration” Res Integr Peer Rev 3: 12.

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How do potential authorship issues arise most commonly or significantly for scientific work in your laboratory or research setting?
  2. Do you and other members of your research team establish (and then honor) a plan for granting authorship before commencing work?
  3. How should cases of gift authorship be handled?
  4. Do you think that the peer review process in your scientific field is generally fair and meritocratic?
  5. Have you ever published a scientific work which you expect won't get much in the way of citations? Should such work be published at all?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

It is becoming ever more common for research institutions to provide a statement, make recommendations, or offer guidelines for establishing authorship on research papers. This is at least in part because authorship disputes are a recurring form of conflict at US research institutions.

Following the ICMJE pattern for granting authorship is one readily-available option for avoiding trouble. But authorship disputes may still arise—say, if collaborating parties have different understandings of what constitutes a substantial contribution, a critical revision, or important intellectual content. Alternative authorship arrangements can also be made—as long as the terms of authorship are stated explicitly, up-front, and known to all relevant parties. Putting an Authorship Policy (AU) into place in advance can help to avoid conflict, disappointment, and misunderstanding. Note that the ICMJE also recommends that those who meet some, but not all, of these criteria be acknowledged in publication though not listed as authors.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had  Mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research; collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of authorship, peer review, and publication.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

KEY CONCEPTS

Collaboration in science means to do research with a team, rather than solo. Collaborative endeavors often extend research along different dimensions, such as: number of investigators; diversity of sites; variety of disciplines; methods or instruments involved; theories or puzzles implicated; and more. Collaborative work provides opportunities but also comes with challenges, since it generally requires interpersonal work to succeed—like communication, open-mindedness, flexibility, patience, and trust. Interdisciplinarity in scientific research means work that spans different scientific disciplines, or domains, or fields. There are different ways to define what constitutes a scientific discipline, or domain, or field: using (e.g.) theory; community; lineage; method; instruments; outcomes; or some combination thereof. However such bounds are drawn, interdisciplinary scientific work is work that spans and crosses these boundaries.  interdisciplinary work can be done individually, but it is very often done collaboratively.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research (The National Academies Press 2005; free at nap.edu)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Ball’s (2019) “Lessons from cold fusion, 30 years on” Nature 569: 601.
  • Berlinguette et al.’s (2019) “Revisiting the cold case of cold fusion” Nature 570: 45–51.

 

CASES IN THE NEWS

  • Woo Suk Hwang and his American collaborator, Gerald P. Schatten—see Lila Gutterman writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How do potential problems with collaborators or difficulties with interdisciplinarity arise most commonly or significantly for scientific work in your laboratory or research setting?
  2. What do you find most challenging about collaborating with scientists from other domains?
  3. How should assessment committees count multipleauthored publications when making hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion decisions?
  4. Is the interdisciplinary scientific work which you might do seen and rewarded by your department or institution in the same way and to the same extent that the more traditionally or centrally disciplinary work which you might do is?
  5. What do you think about the cold fusion collaborative's recent re-investigation of that scientific subject?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

Forming new partnerships or making forays into new scientific domains often has great potential. However, ventures like these also come with some risk. In any sort of collaboration—interdisciplinary, or not—if you see something going drastically and morally wrong, yet internal recourse fails, you should have some idea about other, external sources of redress; you should know how to “blow the whistle.” This might mean contacting your institution’s Research Integrity Officer (or RIO). It might mean using an anonymous reporting service like EthicsPoint. Note also that all parties and institutions involved should have policies with respect to what constitutes, e.g., discrimination or harassment. There is aid, if a partner violates standards of professional conduct.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction  tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research; collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of collaboration and interdisciplinarity.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

KEY CONCEPTS

Conflict of Interest (COI): tension between one set of commitments, interests, or obligations and another set.

External Financial Relationship: another relationship, other than the one you already have (with your primary research  institution), also of an economic nature—such as employment (like paid consulting), holding of equity (like stock, funds, or pension), holding an executive position (like board membership or other management—paid or unpaid), or compensation from licensing and other potential commercialization of Intellectual Property (IP).

Sponsorship Bias: the chance that source(s) of study funding may systematically influence the conclusion(s) drawn by researchers conducting studies funded by that source or those sources.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice (The National Academies Press 2009; free at nap.edu)
  • Reproducibility and Replicability in Science (The National Academies Press 2019; free at nap.edu)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Bodenmeimer’s (2000) “Uneasy Alliance” New Engl J Med 342(20): 1539–1544.
  • Fanelli’s (2009) “How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research?” PLOS One 4(5): e5738.

 

DATA ON SPONSORSHIP BIAS

  • Gaudino et al.’s (2020) “Characteristics…” JAMA Intern Med 180(7): 993–1001.
  • Jefferson’s (2020) “Sponsorship bias in clinical trials” J Roy Soc Med 113(4): 148–157.

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How does potential COI occur most commonly or significantly for work in your research setting?
  2. Does your research institution have a COI office, officer, and / or committee? Should it?
  3. Do you think that your interpretation of results might be swayed by financial sponsorship of your research by an entity which you know is hoping for a particular result? What’s the “Muhammad Ali Effect”?
  4. What do you think academic institutions should do to balance the potential good of fostering healthy relationships with industry beside the possible bad of fostering bias caused by COI in sponsored research?
  5. How robust is the body of evidence for the existence of “sponsorship bias”?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

The process of handing financial COI at research institutions often begins with disclosure of any external financial relationships a researcher might have with other entities that can reasonably appear to be related to their work for the institution. Your
institution should have a COI Officer to whom such disclosures can be made.

Disclosure is often sufficient. But some relationships are deemed, upon examination, to create COI—and these are the ones which might require further review and oversight. The aim of such supervision, often by a COI Committee, is usually to manage, reduce, or
eliminate any bias from the conflict. Note that attempting to eliminate bias does not necessarily mean an external financial relationship will have to be eliminated. It is the bias that must be dealt with.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research; collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of conflict of interest.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01

summary download

 

KEY CONCEPTS

Data plays a role at many of the different stages of science, and one way to discuss and understand the comprehensive research responsibilities of data acquisition and management is to think about the different requirements incurred at different stages. For example, Shamoo & Resnik (2015) divide scientific practice into the following stages, in order to present and assess those data acquisition and management responsibilities which are particular to each stage: problem selection; literature search; hypothesis formation; research design; collecting, recording, and storing data; data analysis; data interpretation; publishing data; sharing data and materials (Chapter 3, pages 61–74). As quotidian as it might seem, basic failures of scientific record-keeping often play a role in generating, sustaining, or occluding the satisfactory resolution of research misconduct cases.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • • Responsible Conduct of Research (Shamoo & Resnik 2015, 3rd ed)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Sterling’s (2011) “Genetic Research among the Havasupai” AMA J Ethics 13(2): 113–117.
  • Leonelli’s (2016) “Locating ethics in data science” Phil Trans R Soc A 374: 20160122.
  • Leonelli’s (2019) “Data — from objects to assets” Nature 574: 317–320.

 

CASES IN THE NEWS

  • Tribe Blasts Exploitation of Blood Samples—see Rex Dalton (2002) writing for Nature

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How do potential issues of data acquisition and (mis)management arise most commonly or significantly for scientific work in your laboratory or research setting?
  2. Do you and other members of your research team have professional procedures in place for managing your data? In other words, do you have a Data Management Plan (DMP)?
  3. How could your institution’s data management policy be improved? Consider what additions, removals, or alterations could be made to the policy.
  4. How distributed and global is data in your scientific domain? What challenges does the special character of this data—distributed, global, or otherwise—pose for your practice?
  5. How did data get so darn big? How has data, and its size and amount, changed in your field over the last decade or so?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

Acquisition and management of samples and data sets can be tricky. Just because consent has been granted in one place, moment, or context does not necessarily mean that said consent will extend beyond that initial setting in the manner which some investigators might wish it to. One of the most notorious cases of recent scientific misconduct in the US involved researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) along with members of the Havasupai Tribe. Ethical  controversy surrounding how scientific specimens and data travel, with whom, and how far the processes of consent might extend is, of course, not restricted to this case. Know the rules of consent—especially its boundaries—and have a DMP.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction  tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research; collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between  science and society. This handout introduces the topic of data acquisition and management.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

KEY CONCEPTS

Respect: this means treating those persons upon whom research is being conducted—or being proposed to be conducted—as autonomous agents. Their participation must be both voluntary and adequately informed. In cases for which the persons upon whom research is being conducted—or being proposed to be conducted—have diminished agency or autonomy, they may still be able to ethically participate in research, but in doing so must be granted special and extensive protections. Beneficence: the first rule of beneficence is not to cause harm to participants in order to secure benefits for others. The second rule is to maximize possible  benefits and minimize possible harms both within the context of the study—for participants—and outside it—for non-participants, for knowledge, for future tech, for society at large, etc. Justice: this requires incorporating notions of equality, equity, and fairness, along with the
concept of desert (pronounced "dessert"); all with respect to the distribution of the efforts, burdens, and fruits of the (proposed) research.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Preserving Public Trust (The National Academies Press 2001; free at nap.edu)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Brandt’s (1978) “Racism and Research… Tuskegee Syphilis Study” Hastings Cent Rep 21–29.
  • Aronowitz’ (2014) “Screening for Prostate Cancer in… Skid Row” Am J Public Health 104(1): 70–76.

 

CASES IN THE NEWS

  • Using Inmates in Drug Trails—see Ian Urbina (2006) writing for The New York Times

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. What tradeoffs amongst respect, beneficence, and justice are most commonly or significantly required by Human Subjects Research (HSR) in your experience?
  2. How should reviewers of proposed HSR rank respect, beneficence, and justice with respect to one another—in order to adjudicate cases of conflict?
  3. How could your institution’s HSR review process be improved? Consider what additions, removals, or alterations you think ought to be made to the process.
  4. What does the history of apparent violations of ethical considerations in HSR mean for your research? What about the reputation of research in general?
  5. What is the legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study today? What does this legacy mean for science?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

The 1979 Belmont Report identified three principles necessary for ethically conducting HSR in the US: respect,  beneficence, justice. Members of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) across the country assess investigators' proposals to engage in HSR, and—among other procedural and institutional factors— these committees approve or deny proposals
based on consideration of “the Belmont trio.” 

Each of these three moral commitments is generally honored by engaging in related, specific research practices. The commitment to respect for persons is usually honored via the practice of obtaining informed consent. Beneficence requires consideration of risks and benefits. Finally, justice is typically honored via the proper, equitable selection of research subjects. The 1991 Common Rule established many key IRB procedures and was updated via the 2017 Final Rule.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research; collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of human subjects research.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

KEY CONCEPTS

Here are ten elements which tend to create successful relationships between a mentor and a mentee in scientific research settings:

  1. Regular and effective communication;
  2. Aligned expectations;
  3. Individual personal integrity;
  4. Good "climate" and work environment;
  5. Support for a healthy work / life balance;
  6. Acknowledged community norms and ethical standards;
  7. Support for and cultivation of scientific literacy and understanding;
  8. Frequent assessment of scientific skills and techniques; 
  9. Acceptance of professional disagreement and diversity; and
  10. Fostered career-independence and promotion of professional development.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research (Steneck 2007)
  • Responsible Conduct of Research (Shamoo & Resnik 2015, 3rd ed)
  • The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM (The National Academies Press 2019; free at nap.edu)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Lee, Dennis, and Campbell’s (2007) “Nature’s guide for mentors” Nature 447: 791–797.

 

CASES IN THE NEWS

  • David Baltimore, Thereza Imanishi-Kari, and Margot O'Toole—see Daniel J. Kevles (1996) writing for The New Yorker

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How do issues with mentor-mentee relationships arise most commonly or significantly for scientific work in your laboratory or research setting?
  2. When is the best time to join the lab or research group of a prospective mentor: at the beginning, middle, or late stage of their career?
  3. What should your institution do to foster healthy mentor-mentee relationships among its researchers?
  4. What should your field’s primary professional organizations or societies do to foster healthy mentor-mentee relationships in your field?
  5. In your current laboratory or research setting, are you a scientific mentor or a mentee? If you are a mentor, what mentor-mentee relationship skill do you most need your mentees to get better at deploying? If you are a mentee, what mentor-mentee relationship skill do you most need your mentor to get better at deploying?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

The mentor-mentee relationship is a deeply important one in science. It represents a significant investment for all involved, as well as introduces significant vulnerability along with the great promise of a successful relationship. In a partnership like this, if you see something going drastically and morally wrong, yet internal recourse fails, you should have some idea about other, external sources of redress; you should know how to seek outside aid. This might mean contacting your institution’s Research Integrity Officer (or RIO) or its Ombuds Office. Note that all parties and institutions involved should have policies which delineate the boundaries of these relationships.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF)
recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research;  collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of mentoring and being mentored.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

KEY CONCEPTS

Fabrication: creating the false appearance of data that does not actually exist; making up results. Falsification: tweaking data that does exist in order to give it a false appearance; manipulating results. Plagiarism: repurposing data in order to falsely present it as novel or original; appropriating results.

Questionable Research Practices (QRPs): e.g., interference with an investigation, or retaliation; dishonest or unethical authorship practices; misleading or misrepresentative  statistical or other data practices; failure to take or obtain records; breach of duty or care with respect to confidentiality or supervision; abuse of editorship or peer review practices; other forms of misconduct.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Responsible Conduct of Research (Shamoo & Resnik 2015, 3rd ed)
  • Fostering Integrity in Research (The National Academies Press 2017; free at nap.edu)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Rossner & Yamada’s (2004) “What’s in a  picture?” J Cell Biol 166(1): 11–15.
  • Martinson, Anderson, & de Vries’ (2005) “Scientists behaving badly” Nature 435: 737–8.
  • Helgesson & Eriksson’s (2015) “Plagiarism in research” Med Health Care Phil 18:91–101.

 

CASES IN THE NEWS

  • Yoshihiro Sato—see Kai Kupferschnidt (2018) writing for Science; Holly Else (2019) for Nature
  • Jan Hendrik Schon—see Robert Lee Hotz (2002) writing for The LA Times; Eugenie Samuel Reich’s (2009) Plastic Fantastic

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How do potential issues of research misconduct arise most commonly or significantly for scientific work in your laboratory or research setting?
  2. How could your institution’s research misconduct policy be improved? Consider what additions, removals, or alterations you think ought to be made.
  3.  What responsibility do individuals have for pursuing allegations of scientific fraud?
  4. What responsibility do journals have for assessing allegations of scientific fraud in their pages?
  5. When do you get excited about a reported new result in your field: right away, or only after some time has passed, in order to allow for establishment and / or replication?

 

POLICY & REPORTING

Every federally-funded American research institution has a federallymandated research misconduct policy, and a corresponding officer in charge of enforcing that policy.

Research Misconduct Policy: your institution’s rules for what qualifies as research misconduct, as well as how alleged instances of it will be handled. Research Integrity Officer (RIO): your institution’s appointed officer for handling and reporting alleged instances of research misconduct.

If you encounter what you think is an instance of research misconduct, you can check your institution’s research misconduct policy or contact your RIO to discuss the situation. Having a conversation is not the same thing as issuing a formal allegation; so, you can reach out for help without triggering a formal review.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research; collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of research misconduct.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

KEY CONCEPTS

“While collecting and analyzing data, researchers have many decisions to make, including whether to collect more data, which outliers to exclude, which measure(s) to analyze, which covariates to use, and so on. If these decisions are not made in advance but rather are made as the data are being analyzed, then researchers may make them in ways that selfservingly increase their odds of publishing (Kunda 1990). Thus, rather than placing entire studies in the file-drawer, researchers may file merely the subsets of analyses that produce nonsignificant results. We refer to such behavior as p-hacking” (Simonsohn, Simmons, and Nelson 2014, 534).

 

EARLY WARNING SIGNS

  • Kunda’s (1990) “The Case for Motivated Reasoning” Psychol Bull 108(3): 480–498.
  • Kerr’s (1998) “HARKing: Hypothesizing After the Results are Known” Pers Soc
    Psychol Rev 2(3): 196–217.

 

THE CONFLAGRATION ERUPTS

  • Ioannidis’ (2005) “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” PLoS Med
    2(8): 0696–0701.
  • Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn’s (2011) “False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant” Psychol Sci 22(11): 1359–1366.
  • Simonsohn, Simmons, & Nelson’s (2014) “P-Curve: A Key to the File Drawer” J Exp Psychol Gen 143(2): 534–547.
  • Wicherts et alia’s (2016) “Degrees of Freedom in Planning, Running, Analyzing, and Reporting Psychological Studies: A Checklist to Avoid p-Hacking” Front Psychol 7: 1832, 1–12.

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. When an exciting new result is announced in your scientific field, how much credence do you tend to give it? Has this changed since the replication crisis?
  2. Can you name an example of a researcher “degree of freedom” from your own area of work? This should be something which you can identify as an upstream choice which might later affect downstream estimations of the significance of your results.
  3. What is p-hacking? Does it matter whether phacking occurs consciously or  unconsciously in science?
  4. Is the idea of comprehensive, non-binding research (pre)registration a good fit for your scientific field?
  5. Without appealing to convention (or tradition, or any other similar conceptual analogue), can you provide a defense of the notion that a p-value of < 0.05 is meaningful, whereas a p-value of ≥ 0.05 is not meaningful?

 

IN SOCIAL CONTEXT

The Replication Crisis (or RepliGate, as some like to call it) has exposed not just one problem or instability within and outside of science but rather many. First, there is the concern it raises within science and among scientists about the reliability of their work
and the literature so much of that work attempts to build on. Failures of replicability are also costly, and this is a problem not just for the scientists but also for their funders (public included). But wasting resources is not the only way to erode trust; trust can also be eroded when results are announced as fact and knowledge one day, only to be taken back the next. Scientists may know the difference between settled and unsettled science, but the public has not always been taught about science with that level of nuance.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research; collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. Because of its import for the health of the relationship between science and society, this handout introduces the topic of the replication crisis.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

KEY CONCEPTS

Deficit Model: the view that public mistrust of, resistance to, or skepticism about science is chiefly due to a lack of public information and understanding—which can be significantly and substantively corrected by providing more, and more
accurate, scientific education and information. Inductive Risk: the chance which scientists take, when they make a decision about the sufficiency of evidence required to make versus fail to make a particular scientific claim, of being wrong in that professional judgment. Value-Free Ideal (VFI): the idea that, at least when practiced as it ought to be, science produces knowledge and other products absent the distorting influences of social values and political forces.

 

TEXTBOOKS & REPORTS

  • Responsible Conduct of Research (Shamoo & Resnik 2015, 3rd ed)
  • Reproducibility and Replicability in Science (The National Academies Press 2019; free at nap.edu)

 

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES

  • Douglas’ (2000) “Inductive Risk and Values in Science” Philos Sci 67: 559–579.
  • Wenner’s (2017) “The Social Value of Knowledge and the Responsiveness Requirement for International Research” Bioethics 31(2): 97–104.
  • Kovaka’s (2019) “Climate change denial and beliefs about science” Synthese 198: 2355–2374.

 

CASES IN THE NEWS

  • Andrew Wakefield, The Lancet, the MMR Vaccine, and Autism—see Brian Deer (2011) writing for  The British Medical Journal

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. What relationship(s) does scientific work in your discipline, domain, or field have with society?
  2. What responsibilities come with receiving public funds in order to conduct scientific research?
  3. What is the relationship between scientific authority and public accountability?
  4. Competition for resources, position, and prestige in research can encourage scientists to generate positive results, and to publicize the publication of their results as quickly and widely as possible. At the same time, public demands for increased reproducibility and reliability of scientific results are also quite prevalent. How can researchers reconcile these two conflicting demands: that of “publish or perish” with “please produce more, more quickly, and more reliable, scientific predictions for society”?
  5. Do you endorse the VFI? 

 

POLICY & REPORTING

As WWII was ending, President Roosevelt requested a report from Vannevar Bush, then-Director of the US’ Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).

Bush’s OSRD housed and supervised The Manhattan Project, and Roosevelt wished to know: what the US could do to bring the scientific knowledge produced by the war effort to the public; how to produce results of similarly startling efficacy in medicine; how the government could aid future scientific research in both the public and private sectors; and how to develop and support America’s young, scientific talent, in order to provide a secure and continuing pipeline of promising scientific careers and results. In 1945, Bush released Science: The Endless Frontier, and the US model of federally funding science was born.

 

FINE PRINT

In 1992–3, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a pair of reports on Responsible Science (Vol. 1–2), and those reports ushered in an era of ethical oversight centered around the concept of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) at federally-funded American research institutions across the nation. By 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had mandated that ”all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research” (NOT-OD-10-019). The National Science Foundation (NSF) recommends—though does not require—something similar. Both agencies suggest that satisfactory RCR instruction tends to cover: research misconduct; conflict of interest; human subjects research; animal subjects research;  collaboration and interdisciplinarity; data acquisition and management; authorship, peer review, and publication; mentoring and being mentored; and the relationship between science and society. This handout introduces the topic of science and society.

 

Materials prepared by Prof. J. C. Havstad (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Work sponsored by ORIIR200063-01 

sUMMARY DOWNLOAD

 

Last Updated: 9/6/23