Section One:
Section Two:
Section Three:
Section Four:
Section Five:
Section Six:
Introduction:
Section One: Ethical Issues in Research
Introduction | Major Issues for Discussion | Case Study |
Footnotes | Additional Resources | Section Assessment and Certificate
Ethics matters in academic and scientific research. The study of ethics is no less and no more important in research than it is in any other practice that has the potential of causing harm or creating good for others. It is expected that practitioners will better understand how to be responsible researchers through the study of ethics. The study of ethics helps people think more clearly about professional expectations and encourages them to examine the assumptions that serve as the basis for conventional behavior. The hope is that the researcher's increased consciousness of his or her role will translate into more ethical action.
Through completing this section, successful participants will be able to:
1). Define and apply basic terms relating to the ethical conduct of research including research misconduct, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, compliance, ethically prohibited behavior, ethically required behavior, ethically permitted behavior, and ethically encouraged behavior;
2). Distinguish between compliance and ethics; and
3). Describe the minimal requirements for research ethics training set forward by the Public Health Service (PHS).
Major Issues for Discussion
The first step in learning how to use ethical concepts in dealing with matters of research is to become familiar with the terminology associated with research ethics.
This section is divided into two sub-sections:
1) Compliance and Ethics Terms
Ethical behavior requires more than simply following the rules. Ethics is the study of how human action affects other humans, sentient beings, or the ecosystem. Ethical researchers understand that their actions have the potential of causing harm and the potential of promoting good for others, for the profession, for society, and for the natural world. They are aware of the special responsibilities that follow from the researcher role and work to fulfill those responsibilities. In the process of meeting their responsibilities, they seek to promote good when possible. Always, at a minimum, they choose actions that do not cause unjustified harm.
Ethical analysis provides a way of making sense of the rules and regulations. Fabrication, for example, is a type of research misconduct. It is legally and ethically prohibited. Fabrication is the act of making up data or results, then recording or reporting them as part of the research record. It is legally required for funding agencies and research institutions to take punitive actions against researchers who fabricate. They are held accountable for their actions.
Fabrication is ethically wrong because it is likely to lead to harm to others. The harm could be direct to a patient who takes a drug that is erroneously reported as having no serious side effects. The harm could be direct to another researcher who trusts the results of fabricated research and wastes valuable time, money and other resources in using that research as a basis for his or her own work. The harm is almost always indirect as well. Indirect harms include the decrease in trust that the general public has in research when they learn about cases of scientific misconduct. This decrease in trust is harmful to the public, who must depend on the accuracy of research.
Compliance Terms/1
Research Misconduct: Fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. It does not include honest error or honest differences in interpretations or judgments of data.
Fabrication: Making up data or results and recording or reporting them as factual results.
Falsification: Manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
Research Record: The record of data or results that embody the facts resulting from scientific inquiry and includes, but is not limited to, research proposals, laboratory records, both physical and electronic, progress reports, abstracts, theses, oral presentations, internal reports, and journal articles.
Plagiarism: The appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit, including those obtained through confidential review of others' research proposals and manuscripts.
Findings of Research Misconduct: A finding that research misconduct, in fact, occurred requires that the fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism be a significant departure from accepted practices of the relevant research community; and the misconduct be committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly; and the allegation be proven by a preponderance of evidence.
Research Institutions: All organizations using federal funds for research, including, for example, colleges and universities, intramural federal research laboratories, federally-funded research and development center, national user facilities, industrial laboratories, or other research institutes. Independent researchers and small research institutions are also included in this definition. Research institutions have the primary responsibility for prevention and detection of research misconduct./3
Research Integrity Officer: Institutional official responsible for assessing allegations of research misconduct. The Research Integrity Officer at most institutions, is the Vice President for Research, or that person's designee.
Legally Required
Ethics Terms/4
Moral Agent: Someone who is aware or who has the capacity to be aware of the expectation that he or she not cause unjustified harm to other persons, sentient beings or systems.
General Morality: The questions relating to ethics in research are a subset of the questions that relate to general morality. General morality dictates that it is not acceptable to cause pain, death, disability, or deprive someone of freedom or pleasure without justification. General morality also requires that acts of deception, cheating, promise-breaking, law-breaking and neglect of responsibility be considered examples of wrongdoing unless there is justification for the acts.
Publicity: It is reasonable to expect individuals to act ethically only if it possible for them to know what those ethical expectations are and if following those expectations will not cause them unjustified harm. The expectations should be public. Exceptions that people want to make for not doing what is usually expected should be public as well.
Justification: Ethically acceptable exceptions to doing what is usually expected have the following features: 1) if they are justified for any person, they are justified for every person when all of the ethically relevant features are the same (one cannot justifiably make an exception of oneself if one is not willing to make the same exception for everyone in the same situation); 2) the exception cannot cause unjustified harm to oneself or others; and 3) the exception can be known publicly.
Ethical Rules: Rules that identify ethically questionable actions that are known to cause suffering or cause an increased risk of causing harm. One set of rules is that it is ethically prohibited to cause pain, death, disability or deprive others of opportunity or pleasure without justification. Another set of rules is that it is also ethically prohibited to do any of the following without good reason: deceive, cheat, break promises, break the law, or neglect one's duty.
Ethical Ideals: Ideals are actions that lessen the amount of harm suffered or decrease the risk that people, other sentient beings, or the ecosystem will suffer harm. As long as one is not violating an ethical rule, general morality encourages, but does not require, following ethical ideals. People are praiseworthy for following ethical ideals, but are not blameworthy for not performing the ideal.
Ethically Prohibited: Actions that are contrary to those required by general morality or by reasonable expectations within the research community and are not justifiable. People are blameworthy for acting in ethically prohibited ways. By way of example, it is ethically prohibited to violate the rules and regulations regarding responsible research that are set out by the federal government, funders, and research institutions.
Ethically Permitted: Actions that are consistent with those required by general morality and by reasonable expectations within the research community. It is ethically permitted to do more than follow minimal rules and regulations.
Ethically Required: Actions that follow from the special role-related responsibilities of being a researcher. It is ethically required that researchers be in compliance with federal and institutional rules and regulations.
Ethically Encouraged: Actions that are ethically permitted and, in addition, are intended to lessen suffering or lessen the risk of suffering harms.
Blameworthy: One who acts in ethically prohibited ways.
Praiseworthy: One who acts in ethically encouraged ways.
Descriptive Ethics: The study of how people do act.
Normative Ethics: The study of how people should act.
2) Public Health Service (PHS) Policy
PHS has identified nine core instructional areas. These are:
However, most research institutions are committed to the long-term goals identified by PHS for all researchers, not just those covered by the PHS requirements. Those goals include:
2). Improve the ability of participants to make ethical and legal choices in the face of conflicts involving research;
3). Develop appreciation for the range of accepted practices for conducting research;
4). Provide information about the regulations, policies, statutes, and guidelines that govern the conduct of PHS-funded research; and
5). Develop positive attitudes toward life-long learning in matters involving the responsible conduct of research./6
Case Studies
Note: The case study will open in a new window. When you have completed all of the alternatives for a case, close the window to return to this section.
Case Study 1: Expedience, Misrepresentation, or Falsification?
Case Study 2: Crashing into Law.
Footnotes
1/Unless otherwise noted, definitions relating to compliance are from "Research Misconduct Definitions and Guidelines for Federal Research Agencies," December 6, 2000, Federal Register, pages 76260-76264.
3/PHS Policy on Instruction in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR), December 1, 2000
4/Unless otherwise noted, definitions relating to ethics are from, or adapted from, Gert, Bernard, (1998). Morality Its Nature and Justification. New York: Oxford University Press.
5/Please note that the course authors have expanded Gert's sphere of those worthy of moral consideration from only living human beings. As is argued elsewhere, the authors include sentient beings and systems as subjects worthy of moral consideration.
6/PHS Goals.
Additional Resources
Below are links that may help you understand ethics and compliance issues a little better:
Section Assessment and Certificate Make sure you have reviewed all of the materials within this section, before you attempt the assessment.
When you have successfully completed the assessment, you will be offered an opportunity to print out a certification document for your records. You can then close the window and return to the course.
To begin the assessment, click this link.
1). Compliance and Ethics Terms, and
2). Public Health Service (PHS) Policy and Goals.
The terms for this section are separated into compliance and ethics. Compliance and ethics are both necessary for the conduct of responsible research. Compliance means that investigators and institutions follow the rules that are set out for them. Rules regarding research come from the federal government, from funders, and from the institution itself. The essential elements of compliance are that an individual researcher knows the rules and that he or she is motivated to follow the rules.
Research: Includes all basic, applied, and demonstration research in all fields of science, engineering, and mathematics. This includes, but is not limited to, research in economics, education, linguistics, medicine, psychology, social sciences, statistics, and all research involving human subjects or animals, regardless of originating discipline. Research, according to the Belmont Report, is an "activity designed to test a hypothesis, permit conclusions to be drawn, and thereby to develop or contribute to generalized knowledge (expressed, for example, in theories, principles, and statements of relationships). Research is usually described in a formal protocol that sets forth an objective and a set of procedures designed to reach that objective."/2
This terminology is used in the course to differentiate actions that are merely in compliance (legally required) from those actions that are ethically permitted.
Ethical (syn. Moral): Within the realm of considerations that looks at the potential harms caused to other persons, sentient beings or systems./5
The pending PHS policy requires that those who have direct and substantial involvement in proposing, performing, reviewing or reporting research or who receive research training supported by PHS funds or who work on PHS-supported research regardless of PHS support, complete a basic program of instruction in the responsible conduct of research.
1). Data acquisition, management, sharing, and ownership;
Within a presentation of these core areas, information about compliance with related PHS and institutional policies should be included. PHS does not require that all research staff have training in all areas. Institutions may use discretion in determining educational needs.
2). Mentor/trainee responsibilities;
3). Publication practices and responsible authorship;
4). Peer review;
5). Collaborative science;
6). Human participants;
7). Research involving animals;
8). Research misconduct; and
9). Conflict of interest and commitment.
1). Increase knowledge of, and sensitivity to, issues surrounding the responsible conduct of research;
Thus, the institutional commitment is to create and maintain an environment that encourages ethical research, rather than research that is simply in compliance.