Exam 1: Research Ethics Flashcards
Two types of ethics
- Professional issues
* Protection of human participants
Scientific misconduct - what’s the most serious example?
- Most serious: fraudulent or false data
- Retracted papers cost $58 million in NIH funding from 1992-2012 (Stern et al., 2014)
- Less than 1% of the budget
- Median 91.8% decrease in publication rate and large declines in funding
• http://retractionwatch.com/
Consequences of scientific misconduct
- Retraction of published papers
- Ban on government grants for years
- The end of your career (trust is everything!)
- Legal (felony) charges
Correct Attribution of Ideas
- Cite the ideas of others appropriately
- Anything that is not “common knowledge”
- Whenever possible, paraphrase don’t quote (paraphrase ≠ replacing a few words)
- https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/1/
- If you do quote, cite the page number!
Reasons people use direct quotes
- They don’t understand the material
- There’s no other way to say the information without plagiarizing
- When making a point about who said the information, or contrasting it with another view
Authorship (general)
• Authorship establishes credit and accountability
-Could the project have been accomplished without that particular person (vs. any research assistant)?
- Authors must share responsibility for the entire paper
- Avoid honorary authors
- Talk about expectations EARLY- A little awkwardness now will save you a lot of awkwardness later
Authorship by fields
• Psychology: First author is the most critical to the project
• Neuroscience: First author and last (senior) author are
most critical
• Mathematics: alphabetical order
• Humanities: typically single authorship
• Hearing and Speech: ?
Partial publication
(piecemeal publication)
• Collecting data for one study and publishing several articles on this one large data set rather than publishing all the findings in one paper
Duplicate publication
publishing the same data and results in more than one publication - maybe in MRI situations this is ok
Conflicts of Interest (COI)
• Roles -Balancing your roles as a clinician and researcher • Experimental treatments vs. standards • Recruiting participants from your clinics (must not impact care)
• Financial
-When outside financial
interests compromise, or have the appearance of compromising, the professional judgment of a researcher
“The Common Rule”
Federal Policy for Protection of
Human Subjects
- Participation must be voluntary, not coerced
- Participants must be safeguarded from harm (physical and psychological)
- Participants must provide informed consent
- Must maintain participant’s confidentiality and privacy
- Must understand participation can be discontinue at any time
Iowa “Monster” Study
- MaryTudor&WendellJohnson (1939)
- Investigated the idea that environmental feedback could cause a normally speaking child to stutter
- Four groups of participants (orphan children from Davenport, Iowa): Those who already stuttered vs. those who did not & Control group vs. experimental group
- Typically developing children were assigned to an experimental group and labeled stutterers
- Received intense negative feedback for any disfluency
- These children changed their speech behavior: became reluctant to speak, spoke more slowly, became shy and embarrassed, accepted that there was something wrong with their speech
Tuskegee Syphilis Study
• 1932-1972
* 399 poor African-American men from Macon County, AL, were told they were being treated for “bad blood”
• For participating, given free medical exams, meals and burial insurance
• They actually had syphilis. At the time, there was no treatment for it.
• Penicillin became a standard cure in 1947 and was withheld from them so that scientists could continue to study the disease
• Continued until public health workers leaked it to the media
• 28 had died of syphilis, 100 of syphilis complications, wives (40) & children (19) had been infected
• In 1973 the NAACP filed a lawsuit, and a $9M settlement was divided among
participants, with free health care to those still living, and their family members
• In 1997, Clinton made a formal apology from the government
3 components to the Belmont Report (1979)
respect for persons
beneficence
justice
Respect for Persons - Belmont Report
• Principle: - Acknowledge autonomy - Protect those with diminished autonomy •Practice: Informed consent - Provide information about the study at a level the participant can comprehend, must be voluntary (no coercion), must be able to withdraw at any time
Informed consent
• Investigator ensures the participant understands: Risks and benefits, Any aspects that might influence willingness to participate
• Informed consent is a PROCESS, not a signature on a piece of paper
• Even if a therapy that HELPS the person, must have their consent, and must know about alternatives – Needs to be told about all options, even if this makes it
less likely they’d agree to do your experimental one
Concealment or deception
• The investigator must determine whether there are any alternatives, determine whether the risk is justified, ensure that participants are provided with an explanation as soon as possible
Deception may be OK if….
- The research can’t be achieved otherwise
- When being fully informed later (debriefing), participants are expected to find the procedures reasonable and to suffer no loss of confidence in the investigator’s integrity
- Participants are allowed to withdraw at any time, and are free to withdraw when the concealment or misrepresentation is revealed.
- Investigator takes full responsibility for detecting and removing stressful after-effects of the experience