LS 403Evaluation of Information Services

Ethics in Research

Dishonesty

Ethical Issues

Misconduct/ Dishonesty in Research Design Research Execution Analysis of Data Publication/ Non-publication/

Dissemination of Findings Researchers have a responsibility to

those they study and their audiences

Research Design & Execution

Choosing an inappropriate methodology: Extreme Examples:

Stanford Prison Guard Experiment Milgram Experiment

Less Extreme, but still questionable Unobtrusive observation Violation of Privacy

Research Design & Execution

Researchers have a responsibility to those they study. Informed consent Institutional Review processes What about children?

Analysis of Data

Fudging Results Fabricating data or information… What is

True? Love and Consequence A Million Little Pieces Even on resumes… Robert Irvine

Misquoting/ Taking out of Context Suppressing information Carelessness in review- omission of

dissenting view points

Dissemination of Information:Problems in Publishing

Gratuitous co-authorship Premature publication/ duplicate

publication Questions of online/ open access and

copy editing? Inaccurate referencing/ citations Plagiarism

How Opal got kissed…

Dissemination of Information: Problems of Not Publishing

Suppression of Information Presidential Committee’s investigation

into pornography Publication bias against negative results

in medicine

Of All the Questions That Remain Unanswered,

the simple one, “How much misconduct is there?,” has inspired the most debate.

Also important: What pressures lead to misconduct? Implication, esp. for library collections, of

the “self-correcting” nature of science?

Examples

“A key study pointing to the effectiveness of high-dose chemotherapy and bone marrow treatments in treating metastatic breast cancer was based on faked data (Arizona Republic, April 27,

2001) A professor admitted to having fabricated

experiment results in two studies … while she was an assistant professor … from 1996 to 2000. The studies were partially funded with federal money (Boston Globe, December 16, 2001)

Examples

A highly regarded humanities professor at the University of California at San Diego listed “a bachelor’s degree from Grambling College on his CV.” He claimed to have graduated in 1963. In fact, he had no college diploma (The Chronicle of Higher education, April 4, 2003, P. A10)

1995 Paper on “Coping with Discrimination”

“has been cited in more than 50 psychology studies, according to the Social Sciences Citation Index. The author fabricated three experiments in the above article and one more.

The fabrications were part of federally-funded research

Anthropology

Some anthropologists may have conducted questionable experiments on Amazon tribes. They fomented deadly disease and violence and they observed the consequences--injecting the Yanomami with a controversial vaccine for measles (lack a natural immunity to it); the vaccine causes measles-like symptoms and has proved deadly

They also staged fights among tribal members and encourage violence

Northern Kentucky University

Five professors (the entire finance department) accused by the University “of fabricating data in scholarly papers, duplicating large chunks of their own work in several papers, plagiarizing and listing as authors a number of professors at the university who did not contribute.”

“The same sets of data and results were used in multiple papers but were attributed to different studies. … passages [were] duplicated in several papers.”

Do Ethical Issues Comprise Misconduct?

Business professor at Columbia University wrote a letter on business school stationery to the owners of about 250 restaurants in NYC, complaining that he had been stricken with food poisoning after dinner at their establishments. He stated that he and his wife went to the restaurant to celebrate a wedding anniversary but ended up in the bathroom, vomiting.

In fact, he was doing an “experiment” to compare how business owners responded to polite customer complaints versus how they responded to complaints from enraged-sounding customers.

How about …

…Researchers [in a study conducted in mid-1990s] enticed landlords to recruit 108 families with healthy children to live in row houses with varying degrees of lead contamination to measure the effectiveness of lead-abatement projects in the city’s poor areas. The parents say they didn’t know the row houses had lead paint, and were told too late by the researchers that their children were being put at risk.

Boston Globe (9/3/2001, p. 1)

Or …

“The editor of American Psychologist … has reneged on an agreement to publish an article critical of the journal’s sponsor and of several members of Congress. … In … [that article, the author] charges the American Psychological Association with caving in to congressional pressure when it apologized for an article about child sexual abuse” [The Chronicle of Higher Education, online, 05/23/2001; 05/28/1999]

Notice of Retraction

“Of the eight persons names as authors of the article [one that appeared in print], some claimed that they had never reviewed the original data and most claimed that they had not seen or approved either the original version or one or more of the three revised versions of the manuscript One author claimed that he had seen neither the original data nor any version of the manuscript. Thus, there was a egregious disregard of the principles of authorship …

“During the review process, several of the authors’ signatures were falsified by a coauthor (who later confirmed to us that he had done this)”

Gregory D. Curfman, “Editorial: Notice of Retraction,” The New England Journal of Medicine (March 6, 2003)

PLEDGE REQUIRED (IN WRITING)

Prior to manuscript review, each author attest to (1) his/her authorship of the paper, (2) the fact that he/she had access to all study data, the freedom to analyze the data as he/she saw fit, and the authority to publish the findings regardless of the implications for companies funding the research

The journal then sends each author an email when the accepted has been accepted.

A study by Dr. John M. Budd et al. in the Journal of the American Medical Association (July 15, 1998) examined 235 scientific journal articles that had been formally retracted due to error, misconduct, failure to replicate results, or other reasons. The researchers reported that, “Retracted articles continue to be cited as valid works in the biomedical literature after publication of the retraction.”

Summary of Types of Problems

Lack of honoring of “intellectual debt:” lifting the work of others without attribution. The intentional mis-characterization of works of others

Falsifying data/experiments/ research findings

Falsifying CVs

While reviewing research proposals, turning one down and later submitting the same proposal yourself

Filling out some questionnaires yourself or some of the questions

Gratuitous co-authorship, premature publication, duplicate publication

Is the Problem That Serious?

There are only a few isolated incidents

Whatever appears in print, is true? (Even in peer reviewed journals)

Science, after all, is self-correcting

Governments never “lie”

How about links between corporate sponsorship and conflicts of interest (e.g., medical research)-- Researchers have a

significant financial stake in companies sponsoring research; researchers are driven by financial motives, including the need for subsequent public or private sector funding

Misconduct Affects the

Findings of research, government and non-government

What we read and hear Scholarship, including the integrity of journals and

fields of study (e.g., publishing fraudulent research to discredit a journal and a field of study)

educational system Policies based on certain research Library budgets Other?

New Issue

“Thumbing his nose at academe, a scholar tries to auction his services,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 28, 2004)

An independent scientists auctioned his services as co-author on eBay, with the promise of helping the highest bidder write a scientific paper for publication

How Can We Attack the Problem

Strengthen penalties on those convicted of misconduct Review conflicts of interest guidelines Require signed agreements from all authors; ensure that each

one is sent that agreement and returns it Make more people aware of the issue (as the New England

Journal of Medicine has done) Find ways to increases information literacy of various groups

—e.g., locate and evaluate information before using it. Do not assume the problem resides only with students Become familiar with the Office of Research Integrity

(Department of Health and Human Services), http://ori.hhs.gov/html/programs/instructresource.asp

How Can We Attack the Problem

Resume congressional oversight hearings, like done in early 1980s, for the purpose of (1) greater public awareness and (2) accountability for public monies spent

Increase knowledge of the research process, among students in more social and behavioral sciences Including requiring research methods in LIS

programs

How Can We Attack the Problem

Continue to support committees that protect human subjects, animals in research, etc.

Pressure universities to deal with the issue and have proper guidelines for addressing the issue. Tendency is to be silent on the issue: image

Correct bibliographic apparatus: need for retraction and correction

Role of human and animal subject committees at colleges and universities

What We Cannot Do

Interfere with the integrity of the peer- review process

Attack or discourage legitimate whistleblowing Overvalue replication of social science research

(placing such research in peer-reviewed journals) Assume that misconduct applies only to students Assume that misconduct is an insignificant

problem

Elsevier

The ethical problems you may encounter include: • Plagiarism

• Research results not being original to purported author • Allegations about authorship of contributions • Double submission   We have prepared a legal guide for you to help you deal with such issues, which you can find at:

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/editorsinfo.editors/ethicshelpdesk

 

Elsevier and PubMed

Effective October 1, 2006, Wellcome Trust grantees are required to submit an electronic copy of the final manuscripts of their research papers into PubMed Central (PMC), or UKPubMed Central (UKPMC) once established. The Wellcome Trust requires that the author’s work be made freely available to the public, via PMC, no later than six months after the official date of final publication (see http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/node3302.html for more details of the Wellcome Trust policy).

Elsevier and PubMed (continued)

The agreement with the Wellcome Trust allows authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply with these requirements. This new agreement is intended to support the needs of Elsevier authors, editors, and society publishing partners, and protect the quality and integrity of the peer review process.

Information regarding this agreement is available on Elsevier.com, at

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/

authorshome.authors/wellcometrustauthors

Students (continued) Failure to repay intellectual debt in what they use/cite Inaccurate references

Faculty Failure to obtain permission for quotations, figures,

and adaptations of figures placed in scholarly articles Failure to repay intellectual debt and inaccurate

references Place article on home page contrary to journal/

publisher specifications (publisher agreement)

Colleges and Universities

Institutional Research Boards Protect human subjects Protect animal subjects

Copyright Permission

Form to sign Liability

Use of quoted material

Poetry, tables/figures

Restricted manuscript collections

Finally, authors should think about titles of their publications

Fending Off Attacks on Social Science http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/

04/nsf