Research misconduct practices

The Committee confirmed 16 of the 24 allegations of research misconduct it had identified and scrufiifized. In addition, other questionable research practices were discovered and disclosed. Eventually 28 papers by Schon and his... 

But the Schon case also encompasses phenomena that, while not falling under the prevailing US government definition of research misconduct, exemplify what one researcher calls other deviations from acceptable research practices, deviations widely regarded as unethical. In what follows, I shall call them ethically questionable research practices. Discussion of three of them follows. 

It is striking that the Bell Labs Investigation Committee completely cleared all of Schon s collaborators and co-authors of all charges of research misconduct but was non-committal on the non-FFP ethically questionable research practices involved. This shows that no consensus yet exists in the research community about the ethical responsibility of researchers to avoid forms of ethically problematic research conduct beyond FFP, including dubious authorship practices that could be just as harmful as cases of FFP. 

Micro-social. The only previous case study in this book that dealt with engineering research - Case 03, the Schon case - focused on research misconduct and several ethically problematic research practices linked with collaborative research. Here I shall examine ethical responsibilities related to several different ethically questionable research practices, only the first of which is specific to nanotechnology. 

Misconduct or fraud is a rare occurrence in clinical research, but when misconduct or fraud is confirmed the consequences can be disastrous (Lock et al., 2001 Eichenwald and Kolata, 2004). Fraudulent practices in clinical trials can lead to trial subjects being exposed to safety risks, to submitted or published clinical data being j eopardized and, if the product has been licensed based on false data, this may result in compromised patient safety. Therefore, any suspected case of misconduct or fraud should be taken seriously and be assessed -this is when QA auditors should be involved. 

It is tempting to use the words fraud and misconduct almost interchangeably, but in most cases, they can be differentiated. In broad terms, research fraud is defined as wilful behavior that breaches the principles of good practice in research. Fraud must have an element of deliberate action true fraud is not an accidental act. 

In the United Kingdom, a Joint Consensus Conference on Misconduct in Biomedical Research was held in Edinburgh in 1999 with all major stakeholders and interested parties represented. The panel s main conclusion was that a national panel should be established - with public representation -to provide advice and assistance on request . The suggestions for the remit of this panel included the development of models of good practice, assistance with investigation of alleged misconduct and the collection and publication of information on incidents of research fraud and misconduct. It was only in 2004 that a National Panel for Research Integrity... 

At most institutions, the tenure system provides new assistant professors a time span of approximately six years in which to demonstrate achievement in teaching, service, practice, and scholarship/research. - After this window of time, the faculty decides whether to grant tenure. The granting of tenure implies a guaranteed position within the university unless there is financial exigency or the faculty member is found guilty of misconduct. 

As seen in the Pinto, Apple, and Westway cases, the ethically problematic pattern upstream acquiescence, downstream misconduct recurs in contemporary engineering practice. It is difficult for engineers to bring themselves upstream to oppose, resist, or reject compressed schedules that are imposed on them and that they know or suspect are unrealistic. This is so even when they realize that meeting those schedules is likely to result in serious downstream misconduct. In the case studies, upstream time compression resulted in downstream failure to do adequate safety testing on a product (Pinto), imposition of unhealthy psychosocial conditions on some family members (Apple Newton), and deception about the adequacy of truncated critical research studies (Westway). 

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