Research Integrity and Ethical Conduct in Scientific Research - Fichtner Flashcards
What is the goal of research integrity?
The goal is to ensure accuracy, transparency and ethical conduct of research. It is important to maintain honesty, accountability an respect for stakeholders.
Who are the stakeholders?
Scientists and researchers, funding agencies, academic institutions, industry and corporation, government bodies, public, patients and healthcare providers, students and educators.
What are the norms of research integrity and the consequences of breaching research integrity?
The norms of research integrity include proper data collection, analysis, interpretation, reporting and accessibility. The consequences of breaching research integrity include the loss of public trust, the retraction of publications and reputation damage.
What does a critical analysis include?
Objectivity, data consistency and comparative analysis.
What are the main ethical considerations in research?
Responsible authorship, informed consent, and conflict of interest.
What is open science all about?
Enhancing reproducibility, fostering collaboration and public engagement, through ensuring ope access to notebooks, data, peer review, open access, source, scientific social networks, citizen science, and open educational resources.
What does effective communication entail?
Engaging in constructie discussions, disseminating research findings, receiving and implementing feedback.
What is the peer review process?
first the article is submitted, then in the first submission round the article is either accepted or rejected. If accepted it goes through a second round and peer review, it can then get rejected or go through a final revision before it it accepted for publication and then published.
What are the different forms of science misconduct?
Questionable research practices - sloppiness, not publishing negative results, statistical flaws.
Science misconduct - falsification, fabrication and plagiarism.
What is the controversy between Elisabeth Bik and Didier Raoult? What are the legal and ethical implications?
Raoult published numeroud studies during the pandemic that were later criticized for ethical and scientific lapses. Bik identified image manipulation and ethical concerns in several of Raoult’s studies including poor methodology and ethical approval lapses. She publically criticized Raoult’s work, flagging it on platforms like PubPeer.
The legal backlash was that Raoult sued Bik for harrassment triggering a large debacle about whistleblowers in scientific integrity. The lawsuit raised concerns about silencing critics through legal intimidation SLAPP.
What were the problems found in Raoult’s paper?
The figures were manipulated, figures presented as freshly generated data were already present in the original publication. 6 patients originally assigned to the drug treatment arms were described as “lost to follow up” because their treatments were stopped early, critical data was missing in a way that skews the reported outcomes (12.5% of the control patients had negative viral PCR’s at day 6, 1/3 of control patients didn’t have PCR testing on day 6), the study’s methods imply tha tthe methodology was changed after the trial began, the stud was not randomized, and the paper was submitted for consideration on March 16th and accepted on March 17th.
