Week 16 - More ethical considerations Flashcards
What are the 4 BPS ethical principles?
- Respect
- Competence
- Responsibility
- Integrity
How do we put principles into practice?
The players and systems of research ethics:
- Researchers -> guided by a set of ethical principles (BPS)
-> BPS set principles due to autonomy + control - Researcher’s institution (e.g. NTU) -> have their own rules + regulations within which we must operate
- Legislation/ the law -> lay down hard boundaries with serious consequences if transgressed
- Academic journals -> only want to publish work they think has been conducted ethically
- General public
- The media
- Funder
What is the research ethics process?
- Process is usually managed by the researcher’s institution
1) Process starts with researcher’s drafting an ethics proposal
2) Ethics proposal is passed on to several ethics reviewers who read it + decide whether that work is ethical or not
-> may approve work to go ahead or may have concerns which need to be addressed so researchers must revise their ethics proposal and it must go through approval again
3) After approval, researchers can then conduct their experiment
Other factors are not directly involved in this process
- Its up to the institution that the law, funder, professional bodies and ethical principles are satisfied by this process
- General public, media + academic journals are further removed but they expect the institution to be policing the research correctly
What are the ethics of scientific reporting?
- Some would argue this has contributed to the replication crisis
Examples of ethical problems:
Plagiarism -> copying someone else’s data or words, or using them without permission
Misrepresenting data -> reporting the real results, but in such a way as to make them look better than they are
Faking data -> fabricating data, such as adding, altering or removing data points
What is an example of data fabrication?
In 2010, Professor of psychology Marc Hauser was accused and found guilty of scientific fraud
- He was fabricating data to support his own hypotheses
- Figures in several papers showed made up data
- He resigned but is still somewhat active in research
What Marc Hauser did was unethical + it destroyed his career, but it wasn’t illegal
Consequences of his actions:
- Co-workers suffered as a result of his actions
- Progress of his field will be negative
- Public would lose trust
- For him, it largely destroyed his career
What are the ethical issues in healthcare research?
There are numerous ethical challenges when working with patients
- Risks to individuals with experimental treatments
-> unknown harm or benefits - Robust experimental design vs giving patients the best care
- Interests of the researchers vs patient
How is ethics for research done in healthcare?
- Ethics for experiments with patients must be done through the NHS
- NHS ethics is more complex than Uni procedures
- Obtaining NHS ethics usually takes several months
- Multiple national bodies related to the NHS oversee ethics approval:
Health Research Authority (HRA): Unifies ethical approval process in UK
National Research Ethics Service (NRES): National management of ethics committees
Integrated Research Ethics System (IRES): On-line system for managing ethical approval
What is one of the greatest ethical challenges healthcare system faces?
- One ethical challenge is how to spend the health cares limited resources on treating people
- If NHS has fixed budget, should we treat a small number of people who are severely ill and whose treatment is very expensive? or should we treat a larger number of people who have less severe illnesses and can be treated more cheaply, so cure more people for same amount of money?
How do we value the ‘value’ of a treatment?
Try to measure Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALY)
QALY = Length of life x Quality of life
- A treatment can either extend the length of your life - which is an overall quality gain - or can extend the quality of your life - which is also an overall quality gain
-> can do both which is a greater benefit - Value of a treatment is the increase in the area under the line as a result of a treatment
Value for money
Additional cost of new intervention (£) / Additional health gained (QALY) = Additional cost per additional QALY)
What are the principles (the 3Rs) of animal research ethics?
Principles of animal ethics (Russell and Burch, 1959):
Replacement -> use methods which avoid or replace the use of animals whenever possible
Reduction -> use the best experimental methods to obtain the information required from the smallest possible number of animals
Refinement -> use methods which avoid, minimise or alleviate pain, suffering or distress and enhance the welfare of the animals
In the UK, animal research is tightly regulated, and overseen by the Home Office
What is the harm/benefit analysis?
Process of assessing the harms the animal will experience and the likely benefits to be delivered and then determining whether the likely harms to animals are justified by the benefits likely to accrue
What is the animal research ethics process?
1) Draft ethics proposal
2) Local ethical review
3) Review by Home Office
-> result in a project licence which is a licence to conduct the experiment
4) Conduct experiments
-> interim review
5) Retrospective review
