Ethics of Science and Scientific Misconduct.pptx

DILLA UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
Seminar on Ethics of Science and Scientific Misconduct
Prepared by: - Melkam Andargie

Ethics of Science
• Ethics is an important consideration in science.
• Scientific investigations must be guided by what is right and
what is wrong.
• They help ensure that science is done safely and that scientific
knowledge is reliable.
• Science and the ethics of science are two sides of the same
coin, dealing with the same empirical data and actions of the
same scientists.
• Ethical violations adversely affect your scientific integrity.
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• Thinking of their actions in terms of future experimental design,
scientists must explain the significance of their actions in the wider
scientific and human contexts.
• Scientists must take the lead in ensuring that the progress of science
is both ethical and as free from political intervention as possible, if
for no other reason as that only they can do so.
• It is regrettable that ethics has been split from science and renamed
bioethics. Ethics is an integral part of science.
• Like science, it requires us to be consistent and empirically justified
in our interpretations of the actions of scientists.
Ethics of Science Cont…
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• The ethics of science and science itself share the goal of
comprehending in human terms scientists’ actions in
manipulating the physical world.
• The division of science and ethics has been driven by an
increasing interest in the actions of scientists by non-scientists.
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Here are some of the ethical rules that scientists must follow:
 Scientific research must be reported honestly. It is wrong and
misleading to make up or change research results.
 Scientific researchers must try to see things as they really are.
They should avoid being biased by the results they expect or
hope to get.
 Researchers must be careful. They should do whatever they
can to avoid errors in their data.
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 Researchers must inform co-workers and members of the
community about any risks of their research.
 Researchers studying living animals must treat them
humanely. They should provide for their needs and take pains
to avoid harming them.
 Researchers studying human subjects must tell their subjects
that they have the right to refuse to participate in the research.
 Human subjects also must be fully informed about their role in
the research, including any potential risks.
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Scientific Misconduct
• Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of
scholarly conduct and ethical behaviour in the publication of
professional scientific research.
• Misconduct in science is unlikely to remain internal to the
scientific community.
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• Its consequences are too extreme: it can harm individuals
outside of science it squanders public funds, and it attracts the
attention of those who would seek to criticize science.
• As a result, federal agencies, Congress, the media, and the
courts can all get involved.
• Within the scientific community, the effects of misconduct in
terms of lost time, forfeited recognition to others, and feelings
of personal betrayal—can be devastating.
Scientific Misconduct Cont…
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• Individuals, institutions, and even entire research fields can
suffer grievous setbacks from instances of fabrication,
falsification, or plagiarism even if they are only tangentially
associated with the case.
• Scientific misconduct also defined as any practice that deviates
from those accepted by the scientific community and
ultimately damages the integrity of the research process.
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• "Sloppy Research" and "Scientific Fraud" include activities which can
violate science, records and publication.
• Sloppy research is due to absence of appropriate training in research
discipline and methodologies.
• In contrast, scientific fraud is defined as deliberate action during
application, performance of research, and publication. It includes piracy,
plagiarism and fraud.
• Research institutions should adopt rules and regulations to respond to
allegations, start investigational operations and perform appropriate
sanctions.
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• When individuals have been accused of scientific
misconduct in the past, the institutions responsible for
responding to those accusations have taken a number of
different approaches.
• In general, the most successful responses are those that
clearly separate a preliminary investigation to gather
information from a subsequent adjudication to judge
guilt or innocence and issue sanctions if necessary.
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• During the adjudication stage, the individual accused of
misconduct has the right to various due process protections,
such as reviewing the evidence gathered during the
investigation and cross-examining witnesses.
• In addition to falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism, other
ethical transgressions directly associated with research can
cause serious harm to individuals and institutions.
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Scientific Misconduct in the Past
• Ptolemy of Alexandria (90–168), the greatest astronomer of
antiquity, has been accused of using (without attribution)
observations of his predecessor Hipparchus of Rhodes (∼162–
127 BCE), who in turn used much earlier Babylonian
observations as if they were his own.
• Isaac Newton used “fudge factors” to better fit data to his
theories.
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• Gregor Mendel, in his work with crossing pea plants, reported
near-perfect ratios, and therefore statistically very unlikely
ones.
• The high unlikelihood of getting exact ratios was first pointed
out by Ronald A. Fisher, the founder of modern statistics and
one of the founders of population genetics, when he was still
an undergraduate at Cambridge University in 1911.
Scientific Misconduct in the Past Cont…
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• Though Charles Darwin has been cleared of accusations of
stealing the idea of natural selection from Alfred Russell
Wallace, he seems to have only reluctantly credited some of
his predecessors.
• Robert A. Millikan, in his measurement of the charge of an
electron, which led to his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923,
failed to report unfavourable data.
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• Incidentally, Millikan also failed to give co-authorship to his student
Harvey Fletcher, whose work was crucial to the discovery, but in
those days as still today this was not scientific misconduct as
defined by the NIH and NSF. William T.
• Summerlin at Memorial Sloan-Kettering faked a skin transplantation
experiment in 1974 with the help of a black marker pen (Hixson
1976), giving rise to the term “paint the mouse” as a synonym for
scientific misconduct.
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Common Types of Scientific Misconduct
1. Misappropriation of Ideas - taking the intellectual
property of others, perhaps as a result of reviewing
someone else’s article or manuscript, or grant application
and proceeding with the idea as your own.
2. Plagiarism - utilizing someone else’s words, published
work, research processes, or results without giving
appropriate credit via full citation.
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3. Self-plagiarism – recycling or re-using your own work
without appropriate disclosure and/or citation. Any form
of plagiarism can be avoided by using plagiarism
checker tools available online.
4. Impropriety of Authorship – claiming
undeserved authorship on your own behalf, excluding
material contributors from co-authorship, including non-
contributors as authors, or submitting multi-author papers
to journals without the consensus of all named authors.
Common Types of Scientific Misconduct Cont…
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5. Failure to Comply with Legislative and Regulatory Requirements – wilful
violations of rules concerning the safe use of chemicals, care of human and
animal test subjects, inappropriate use of investigative drugs or equipment, and
inappropriate use of research funds.
6. Violation of Generally Accepted Research Practices – this can include the
proposal of the research study, manipulation of experiments to generate preferred
results, deceptive statistical or analytical practices to generate preferred results,
or improper reporting of results to present a misleading outcome.
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7. Falsification of Data – rather than manipulate the
experiments or the data to generate preferred results, this
transgression simply fabricates the data entirely.
8. Failure to Support Validation of Your Research – by
refusing to supply complete datasets or research material
needed to facilitate validation of your results through a
replication study.
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9. Failure to Respond to Known Cases of Unsuccessful Validation
Attempts – published research that is found to be flawed should be
retracted from the journal that published it.
10. Inappropriate Behaviour in Relation to Suspected Misconduct –
failure to cooperate with any claims of misconduct made against you,
failure to report known or suspected misconduct, destruction of any
evidence related to any claim of misconduct, retaliation against any
persons involved in a claim of misconduct, knowingly making false
claims of misconduct
9.
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a) Investigator: Person who is responsible for conducting the
study and if successful research study leads to career
advancement, promotion and possibly financial gains.
b) Employer/Institution: The place where investigator
performs his/her research studies. The institution may gain
credibility and profitability by the success of the researcher.
six essential components that have an effect on the
results of biomedical research
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e) Sponsor of the research
f) Patient (in clinical research studies)
g) Scientific Community: Group which needs reliable scientific
information
h) Public: Community who pays for biomedical research
through taxes and donations.
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• All physicians should ensure that research they participate in is ethically
conducted.
• Each investigator must be aware of the following issues before, during and
after the research process:
i. Validity
 A study is scientifically valid if it answers the questions that it asks.
 It should have a large enough number of subjects to provide statistically valid
results.
 The techniques employed should be reliable, reproducible and sufficient to test
the hypothesis. - The study should not risk human subjects during the process.
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ii. Value - Valuable research has to design to produce
knowledge that ultimately proves to be important,
reproducible, productive and contributory.
 The scientific community and the peers have to benefit from
the results.
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iii. Ethical Issues - Ethical committees should review several aspects of a
proposed study including its risks, benefits, consent forms, the
importance and impact of the new information to be gained and the
confidentiality issues.
 Each human study dealing with patients and volunteer control subjects
should be submitted to an ethical review committee.
 Investigators without access to an ethical committee may wish to contact to
nearest academic medical center willing to review the protocol.
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iv. Compensation- Payments should commensurate with the time
and effort spent and the expenses incurred in recruitment.
v. Authorship - Authorized authorship requires involvement in
developing a study's conception and design, analysing, performing
and interpreting results, drafting or revising the manuscript's
intellectual content and approving the final text.
 Clinicians who are interested in contributing to research should
spend some time
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• The potentially severe consequences for individuals who are found to have engaged
in misconduct also reflect on the institutions that host or employ them and also on
the participants in any peer review process that has allowed the publication of
questionable research.
• This means that a range of actors in any case may have a motivation to suppress
any evidence or suggestion of misconduct.
• Persons who expose such cases, commonly called whistleblowers, find themselves
open to retaliation by a number of different means.
• These negative consequences for exposers of misconduct have driven the
development of whistle blowers charters – designed to protect those who raise
concerns.
Consequences for those who expose misconduct
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References
1. National Academy of Sciences (US), National Academy of Engineering (US), and Institute of Medicine (US)
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research.
Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1995. Misconduct in Science. Available from:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK232240/
2. Angell M, Relman AS (1988) Fraud in biomedical research: a time for congressional restraint. NEJM 318: 1462–
1463. Altman L, Melcher L (1983) Fraud in science. Brit Med J 286: 2003–2006
3. Lock, S (June 17, 1995). "Lessons from the Pearce affair: handling scientific fraud". BMJ. 310 (6994): 1547–48.
doi:10.1136/bmj.310.6994.1547. PMC 2549935. PMID 7787632. (registration required)
4. Acta Neurochir Suppl . 2002;83:11-5. doi: 10.1007/978-3-7091-6743-4_3.
5. Angell M (1986) Publish or perish: a proposal. Ann Int Med 104: 261–262.
6. Andersen D, Attrup L, Axelsen N, Riis P (1992) Scientific dishonesty and good clinical practice. Published by the
Danish Medical Research Council.
7. American College of Physicians (1998) Ethics Manual 4th edn. Ann Intern Med 128: 576–594.
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