Teaching Ethical Aptitude to Graduate Student Researchers

Limited time dedicated to each training areas, irrelevant case-studies, and ethics “checklists” have resulted in bare-bones Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training for present biomedical graduate student researchers. Here, we argue that science graduate students be taught classical ethical theory, such as virtue ethics, consequentialist theory, and deontological theory, to provide a basic framework to guide researchers through ethically complex situations and examine the applicability, implications, and societal ramifications of their research. Using a relevant biomedical research example to illustrate this point, we argue that proper ethics training for graduate student researchers not only will enhance current RCR training, but train more creative, responsible scientists.     

Stewardship of research resources

Most accounts of research ethics focus on the importance of a handful of ethical and epistemological norms for the conduct of science, such as honesty, integrity, transparency, accountability, objectivity, collegiality, fairness, social responsibility, but have little to say about another, less well-known norm that also deserves attention: stewardship of research resources. Many of the behaviors and practices that are widely regarded as unethical or ethically questionable involve wasting or misusing money, time, and other resources. While good stewardship of resources may not be as crucial to the ethics of science as other norms, it is an important consideration that scientists should keep in mind when managing their own resources or mentoring students and trainees in the responsible conduct of research. Additional investigation into the ethics of stewardship may help us better understand how this norm interacts with other research norms and guides scientific conduct.     

Designing Service–Learning to Empower Students and Community: Jackson Elementary Builds a Nature Study Center

We propose an approach to service–learning in which projects are designed so as to empower undergraduate students and community members. When student service scholars take away control from citizens, they can undermine citizens' perceptions of competency; when faculty reduce students' choice and responsibility, they can undermine students' efficacy and desire to learn. We propose four guidelines for optimizing student and citizen experiences: (1) service should serve both the community and the students; (2) service should empower; (3) service should be contextual; and (4) service projects should endure. We elaborate this philosophy and illustrate it with a project in which nine university students and 30 fifth–graders built a science and nature study center for a K–6 elementary school.     

Does the amount of school choice matter for student engagement?

School choice may increase student engagement by enabling students to attend schools that more closely match their needs and preferences. But this effect on engagement may depend on the characteristics of the choices available. Therefore, we consider how the amount of educational choice of different types in a local educational marketplace affects student engagement using a large, national population of 8th grade students. We find that more choice of regular public schools in the elementary and middle school years is associated with a lower likelihood that students will be severely disengaged in eighth grade, and more choices of public schools of choice has a similar effect but only in urban areas. In contrast, more private sector choice does not have such a general beneficial effect.     

Person-oriented research ethics: integrating relational and everyday ethics in research

Research ethics is often understood by researchers primarily through the regulatory framework reflected in the research ethics review process. This regulatory understanding does not encompass the range of ethical considerations in research, notably those associated with the relational and everyday aspects of human subject research. In order to support researchers in their effort to adopt a broader lens, this article presents a “person-oriented research ethics” approach. Five practical guideposts of person-oriented research ethics are identified, as follows: (1) respect for holistic personhood; (2) acknowledgement of lived world; (3) individualization; (4) focus on researcher-participant relationships; and (5) empowerment in decision-making. These guideposts are defined and illustrated with respect to different aspects of the research process (e.g., research design, recruitment, data collection). The person-oriented research ethics approach provides a toolkit to individual researchers, research groups, and research institutions in both biomedical and social science research wishing to expand their commitment to ethics in research.     

Medical school guidelines for investigating misconduct and fraud in science

Institutional review boards (IRBs) are legally required to determine whether the balance between the risks and benefits (the risk-benefit ratio or RBR) of a proposed study is “reasonable” or “proportional”. This obligation flows from their duty to protect the interests of research subjects. It has been argued that it is difficult, perhaps even impossible for IRBs to determine the RBR of studies, because the risks and benefits are not only heterogeneous, but also incommensurable. After arguing that the relevant meaning of incommensurability is incomparability, we discuss whether the risks of participating in a trial and the benefits are comparable. We conclude that at least the risks and the benefits to participants are comparable. In the last section we show that the main problem of RBR analyses is that of interpersonal incompensability. IRBs have to assume that risks to research subjects be compensated by benefits to others. The question is: To what extent? When does it become unreasonable to ask that patients accept the risks of participating in a trial for the benefit of science and/or future patients?     

Cross-Field Comparison of Ethics Education: Golden Rules and Particulars

Research misconduct negatively impacts the scientific community and society in general. Providing training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to researchers is one viable approach to minimizing research misconduct. Although recent evidence suggests ethics training can indeed be effective, little empirical work has examined the similarities and differences across fields. In the present study, we analyzed 62 empirical studies in engineering, biomedical science, social science, and mixed fields. The findings suggest certain instructional principles, or “golden rules,” apply generally to all fields. These golden rules include maintaining a field-specific or field-general approach and emphasizing processes in training. The findings also suggest that content areas contributing to instructional effectiveness vary as a function of field. Generally, it appears that all fields may benefit from taking a multi-pronged approach to ethics education wherein the salient field issues are covered. Implications for RCR education are discussed.     

Asian Public Concern over the Ethics of Scientists: Predictors and Implications for Research Ethics

The following two research questions were examined in this study: 1) What is the public's level of concern with ethics in science; and 2) Are religious affiliation, religious involvement, and education predictors of that concern in Asia? The sample includes 7,963 men and women between the ages of 20 and 59 from ten Asian countries. An overall low level of relative concern toward ethics in science was reported. Lower educational attainment was associated with lower odds of concern. Christian religious affiliation and moderate religious involvement were also associated with lower odds of concern. This article highlights the importance of more active research into social perspectives on ethics in science.     

Bad news about bad news: the disclosure of risks to insurability in research consent processes

One of the phenomena associated with research is "incidental findings," that is, unexpected findings made during the research, and outside the scope of the research, which have potential health importance. One underappreciated risk of incidental findings is the potential loss of the research subject's insurability; or if a research subject fails to disclose incidental findings when applying for insurance, the insurance contract may be voidable by the insurer. In this article, we seek to explain the insurability risks associated with incidental findings and to make recommendations for how researchers and research ethics committees should address the issue of disclosure of these risks.     

Are risks and benefits of oncological research protocols both incommensurable and incompensable?

Institutional review boards (IRBs) are legally required to determine whether the balance between the risks and benefits (the risk-benefit ratio or RBR) of a proposed study is "reasonable" or "proportional". This obligation flows from their duty to protect the interests of research subjects. It has been argued that it is difficult, perhaps even impossible for IRBs to determine the RBR of studies, because the risks and benefits are not only heterogeneous, but also incommensurable. After arguing that the relevant meaning of incommensurability is incomparability, we discuss whether the risks of participating in a trial and the benefits are comparable. We conclude that at least the risks and the benefits to participants are comparable. In the last section we show that the main problem of RBR analyses is that of interpersonal incompensability. IRBs have to assume that risks to research subjects be compensated by benefits to others. The question is: To what extent? When does it become unreasonable to ask that patients accept the risks of participating in a trial for the benefit of science and/or future patients?     

Physician duties in the conduct of human subject research

In this article, I examine a skeptical argument against the possibility of ethically justifying risky human subject research (rHSR). That argument asserts that such research is unethical because it holds the possibility of wronging subjects who are harmed and whose consent to participate was less than fully voluntary. I conclude that the skeptical argument is not in the end sufficient to undermine the ethical foundation of rHSR because it fails to take account of the special positive duty researchers owe their clients and future patients. Although the skeptical argument is defeated, it exacts certain novel concessions from the pro-research position. Of particular importance are the admissions (a) that researchers presumptively owe a fiduciary duty to research subjects, (b) that because the most important risks of rHSR are unknown and unquantifiable that duty must be explicitly waived by all subjects before they participate in any protocol, and (c) that such waivers must be made by individuals who satisfy objective criteria of competence for giving fully voluntary consent. The implementation of procedures responsive to these concerns might have a dampening effect on the conduct of research. However, the article concludes with a consideration of the likely benefits to researchers and society of a more cautious ethical regime.     

从国家社会科学基金立项项目看中国政治学科发展状况——基于1993-2008年国家社科基金政治学类立项项目的分析

本文通过对1993--2008年国家社会科学基金政治学类立项项目的统计分析,从立项数目、立项主题、项目成果形式和立项机构分布等方面呈现了中国政治学现阶段的发展状况,并分析了该学科发展过程中的经验和问题。     

Physician duties in the conduct of human subject research

In this article, I examine a skeptical argument against the possibility of ethically justifying risky human subject research (rHSR). That argument asserts that such research is unethical because it holds the possibility of wronging subjects who are harmed and whose consent to participate was less than fully voluntary. I conclude that the skeptical argument is not in the end sufficient to undermine the ethical foundation of rHSR because it fails to take account of the special positive duty researchers owe their clients and future patients. Although the skeptical argument is defeated, it exacts certain novel concessions from the pro‐research position. Of particular importance are the admissions (a) that researchers presumptively owe a fiduciary duty to research subjects, (b) that because the most important risks of rHSR are unknown and unquantifiable that duty must be explicitly waived by all subjects before they participate in any protocol, and (c) that such waivers must be made by individuals who satisfy objective criteria of competence for giving fully voluntary consent. The implementation of procedures responsive to these concerns might have a dampening effect on the conduct of research. However, the article concludes with a consideration of the likely benefits to researchers and society of a more cautious ethical regime.     

Associations between attitudes towards scientific misconduct and self-reported behavior

We investigate the relationship between doctoral students’ attitudes towards scientific misconduct and their self-reported behavior. 203 questionnaires were distributed to doctoral candidates at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo 2016/2017. The response rate was 74%. The results show a correlation between attitudes towards misconduct and self-reported problematic behaviors among doctoral students in biomedicine. The four most common reported misbehaviors are adding author(s) who did not qualify for authorship (17.9%), collecting more data after seeing that the results were almost statistically significant (11.8%), turning a blind eye to colleagues’ use of flawed data or questionable interpretation of data (11.2%), and reporting an unexpected finding as having been hypothesized from the start (10.5%). We find correlations between scientific misbehavior and the location of undergraduate studies and whether the respondents have had science ethics lectures previously. The study provides evidence for the concurrent validity of the two instruments used to measure attitudes and behavior, i.e. the Kalichman scale and the Research Misbehavior Severity Score (RMSS). Although the direction of causality between attitudes and misbehavior cannot be determined in this study the correlation between the two indicates that it can be important to engender the right attitudes in early career researchers.     

The structure of an undergraduate major and student learning: A cross-institutional study of political science programs at thirty-two colleges and universities

Is there a relationship between the way an undergraduate major in the social sciences is structured and student learning? In this paper, I address the relationship between the structure of the undergraduate major and student learning using data from the political science discipline. To assess the impact of the structure of the major on student achievement, a 29-item electronic questionnaire was employed. I find a very strong relationship between the degree to which a political science major program is structured and student knowledge, even when controlling for plausible alternative explanations for student performance. The results support the notion that majors that are characterized by a sequenced set of courses, the existence of a senior seminar or capstone course, and a required research methodology course taken early on in a Student's career, better prepare political science students than do relatively unstructured majors.Is there a relationship between the way an undergraduate major in the social sciences is structured and student learning? This is an extremely important and central question for social scientists in higher education for two reasons: (1) in this era of “assessment,” social science disciplines are coming under increasing pressure to demonstrate their utility in undergraduate education; (2) unlike other factors that affect student success (such as student ability and ambition) departments can more easily manipulate the structure of undergraduate majors (at least relatively speaking). Thus, understanding the relationship between the structure of the undergraduate major and student development is potentially a key element in instituting effective reforms in the undergraduate curriculum at colleges and universities across the country.In this paper, I address the relationship between the structure of the undergraduate major and student learning using data from the political science discipline. Indeed, there has been considerable interest in recent years in political science as to whether the structure of the undergraduate major has an impact on student learning. Some scholars have argued that the way a major is structured directly affects student development. For instance Wahlke (1991) criticized those political science undergraduate programs that had only a few required courses and other courses were offered as electives without any effort at sequencing them. Indeed, both the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) report on the Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the report produced by the APSA Task Force on Political Science (Wahlke, 1991), noted that unstructured programs are incapable of promoting the necessary skills required of political science students. The AACU report argued that only a consciously structured major that promotes sequential learning creates the “building blocks of knowledge that lead to more sophisticated understanding and … leaps of the imagination and efforts at synthesis” (AACU, 1985, p. 24). The development of thinking skills cannot be accomplished “merely by cumulative exposure to more and more … subject matter”. Majors which emphasize breadth at the expense of depth result in “shallow learning unless students also grasp the assumptions, arguments, approaches, and controversies that have shaped particular claims and findings” (Wahlke, 1991, p. 49).Thus, how a political science major is structured is posited to be related to student learning. However, despite this assertion, relatively little empirical work has been done that systematically examines the relationship between the structure of the major and the development of political science undergraduates. Some works have described programs that seek to emulate the recommendations made by the APSA Task Force and AACU reports, but do not offer evidence that such programs have a positive impact on student learning (Breuning, Parker, & Ishiyama, 2001). Other works have sought to establish a connection between the structure of the major and student reasoning styles by comparing two institutions (Ishiyama & Hartlaub, 2003). However, no studies to date have systematically compared across a number of institutions to demonstrate an empirical connection between the structure of the political science major and student learning. This paper seeks to investigate the purported connection between the structure of the political science major and some aspects of student learning by analyzing data collected from a survey of (32) colleges and universities from across the United States.     

The therapeutic misconception,beneficence, and respect

In order to provide benefits to society, human medical trials must place subjects at risk of harm. This activity is thought to be justified in part by the consent of the subjects involved. But, studies have shown that most such consents are based on a therapeutic misconception (TM); the false belief of subjects that their researchers will act as their personal physicians (seeking their benefit and protecting them from harm), rather than placing them at risk of harm for the good of others. Toleration by researchers of the TM in their subjects is a form of “informational manipulation”; that renders consent procedures disrespectful to subject autonomy. Consent obtained from subjects who labor under a TM is neither voluntary nor informed; as long as they have not been disabused of the TM, the action they take in enrolling in a trial is not the one they intend nor is it autonomously chosen. Changes in consent procedures should be adopted to ensure that all subjects are aware inter alia that (a) the health interests of future patients (as well as the researchers’ and their sponsors’ financial interests) may be more important to researchers than the interest of a subject in his or her health, and (b) normal subjects neither understand nor believe this when told. Close attention to the response of prospective subjects to this information should allow for the exclusion of all but the truly altruistic. However, the result of conscientious implementation of such policies would likely be that human medical research could no longer be conducted on more than a minimal level.     

Multisystemic therapy project in Sweden: what factors affect the tendency of social workers to refer subjects to the research project?

This article examines some of the factors that may have affected the tendency for social workers to refer adolescents to a randomised controlled study of multisystemic therapy (MST). If we are to improve integration between researchers and the clinical setting in the future, it is important to consider those factors that affect implementation of research projects and evidence-based treatment methods. Evidence-based methods that lack the support of clinicians will have problems surviving in clinical practice. In the present study, we found that social workers' treatment ideology was associated with referral rate. Social workers who sympathised with the ideology on which MST is based referred patients to the project to a greater extent. Moreover, we found that the perception of a good work climate and good social support correlated positively with the referral rate from the unit. The results suggest that when implementing evidence-based methods, or research projects on treatment methods, researchers should consider whether the method is consistent with the current treatment ideology within the unit. Working conditions in the unit should also be considered.     

Ethical consideration of the research proposal and the informed-consent process: An online survey of researchers and ethics committee members in Thailand

Researchers designing and conducting studies using human data should consider the values and principles of ethical conduct. Research ethics committees (RECs) typically evaluate the ethical acceptability of research proposals. Sometimes, differences arise between how researchers and RECs interpret ethical principles, and how they decide what constitutes ethical conduct. This study aimed to explore the opinions of these two groups about the importance of core ethical issues in the proposal and in the informed-consent process. An anonymous online questionnaire was distributed to a target population in health-related academic/research institutes across Thailand; 219 researchers and 72 REC members participated. Significantly, more REC members than researchers attributed the highest importance to three core ethical considerations – risk/benefit, vulnerability, and confidentiality/privacy. For the informed-consent process, significant differences were found for communication of risks, decision-making authority for consent, process for approaching study participants, and availability of a contact for study deviations/violations. The different ratings indicate differences in the groups’ perspectives on ethical principles, which may affect focal congruence on ethical issues in the proposal. Communication of these findings should help close gaps between REC and researcher perceptions. Further study should investigate how RECs and researchers perceive equivocal ethics terms.     

Self-experimentation

Except in certain cases of unusual risk, self-experimentation should not be encouraged. It is usually scientifically inadequate for lack of proper controls and sufficient subjects to generate meaningful results. It is also inadequate as an ethical test because even if lay persons are also enrolled, self-experimentation is neither necessary nor sufficient to establish that they may participate. It is not necessary to establish that lay persons may participate because institutional ethics review and informed consent are better ways to determine this. It is not sufficient because the investigator may be more risk accepting or not medically typical. Moreover, because scientific research is now done in teams, self-experimentation may involve undue influence when junior investigators participate as research subjects.