The Eradication Of Research Misconduct

Examine the impact of research that has been conducted in the United States that violated the rights of subjects or involved ethical misconduct. What were the effects on the study participants?  What changes have been made related to current guidelines for research as a direct result of this misconduct?

To ensure that a researcher’s enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding doesn’t let them get carried away, clear guidelines for ethical behaviour in research, a Code of Ethics, have been established by governments, institutions and various professional societies such as the American Psychological Association(APA), the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI).

For example,it say, “Before the Board of Regents announced its decision, the negative press about Southam’s work had gotten the attention of the NIH, which funded his research and required it's investigators to get consent for all studies involving humans.” Another example,it says, “Beecher published a detailed list of the twenty-two worst offenders, including researchers who'd injected children with hepatitis and others who'd poisoned patients under anesthesia using carbon dioxide. Southam’s study was included as example number 17.” These pieces of textual evidence show how NIH found Southam and other scientists were doing unethical

The history of research ethics begins with tragic historical cases of unethical research and how they contributed toward present values and ethics in research. One of these historical tragic studies was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama. This post will discuss the unethical behavior of that study.

The example of unethical or questionable science behavior I have decided to discuss involves informed consent. An article written in the Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology & Research describes informed consent as the process by which individuals are advised of the different facets of research, including risks, that they will be participating in that allows them to make a voluntary and informed decision as to their willingness to engage in the procedure.

An article was chosen from the University Library to evaluate the issue of unethical business research conduct. The article chose is called Flacking for Big Pharma: Drugmakers Don't Just Compromise Doctors; They Also Undermine the Top Medical Journals and Skew the Findings of Medical Research . The identification of the unethical business research involved in the article is given. The parties involved along with effected party is mentioned. The evaluation of the article also identifies how the unethical behavior affected the organization, injured party, and society. A proposition of

Research is important in any business to interpret data being collected to improve or make new discoveries. The article read was about Dr. Woo Suk Hwang who used unethical research to enhance his career in the world of science. Hwang hurt everyone who was involved in his work. Leading people to believe that his research was real he provided false hope into his new discoveries. Trying to figure out why he would want to ruin his career and how this could have been avoided is important to why he used fabricated research. Looking into the unethical decisions made by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang will help people see what could be possible consequences for using false

Science plays an integral role in the development and findings of many great things that we can benefit from. Integrity along with a specific set of moral standards must always be followed in order to ensure the end result enables a healthy environment for all whom wish to benefit from such studies. Integrity must always play and be the most essential key role in scientific research. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1831) and Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) one is able to conclude that integrity must be maintained while conducting scientific research as a lack of can result in the creation of monsters.

originate from a medical professionals mishandling of a study. This impacts the reputation of the whole medical community. Discovering

For this discussion, the infamous case of scientific misconduct that I chose is about Andrew Wakefield’s article on linking MMR vaccine to autism. Wakefield is a former doctor and researcher who was found guilty for falsifying data in order to mislead the public that MMR vaccines correlate with autism. For example, Wakefield purposely changed the medical entries of his participants to support his study that MMR vaccines will induce autism. He included a small group of participants, approximately 12 children, to join his study. However, these children were suggested by biased organizations, who attempted to discourage the public from getting MMR vaccines. Therefore, his study did not give an overall unbiased sample to show that his experiment was reliable. They were

These are some examples for people who involved in research misconduct: Mahesh Visvanathan and Gerald Lushington, computer scientist who were worked at University of Kansas, were found to have plagiarized of their research. Their punishment was to leave their work. In 2006, Hwang Woo-suk, Korean researcher, had done a series of experiments in stem cell research which found later that he had fabricated them. Hwang was charged with a two-year suspended prison and fired from his position in Seoul National University.

I’ve learned that it’s not necessarily what we find out from research but, where we gathered the information. We should be careful with how we find out information. With all information gathered, we must also gather participants. It is essential that those whom take on the role of scientific researcher of psychology that the guidelines of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct be followed (Cozby & Bates, 2015, p. 47). Confidentiality and privacy is very important within research. Confidentiality is an issue when a researcher has assured subjects that the collected data are only accessible to people with permission, generally only the researcher (Cozby & Bates, 2015, p. 50). One major step to ensure proper treatment is to gather informed consents. An informed consent allows all participants to understand all parts of research might influence their active decision of

There has been a long-going development of a public image of scientists, one that has recently begun to change. Due to factors such as the internet and the media, science is something that is able to been seen and looked into simultaneously by numerous people. When a scientist intentionally fudges their data, it is not small news. Problems of this sort have birthed various concerns about science, and about science’s authority and reliability in specific. This speculation of dishonest scientists not only will effect the reliability of science in the eyes of the public, but also the realm in which scientists are producing truly credible knowledge. “Our technical knowledge is only as secure as the moral economy in which it is produced” (Shapin, ?). As of now, the way in which scientists come to agree or settle disputes, is an issue that we cannot fully grasp.

It can be argued that deception in research is unethical and should never be condoned. One of the main arguments against deception in research is that it takes away the participants right to informed consent. However, the use of deceptive measures in research can be appropriate in certain circumstances. For instance if the participants knew exactly what the researcher was studying, the participant could consciously or unconsciously change their behavior, thus ruining the results of the study. The Institutional Review Boards (IRB) is in place to ensure that proposed research is done in an ethical manner. And that means that deceptive research be kept at a minimum and done only when there is no other way to obtain results.

Moreover, Woolley KL and colleagues demonstrated that professionally written papers are less likely to be retracted for misconduct. In a systematic, controlled, retrospective study they showed how publications retracted due to misconduct rarely had PMW support (3/213;1.4%) or declared pharmaceutical industry support (8/213; 3.8%) (Woolley, 2011). Finally, Shah S and co-workers exhibited that papers written with PMW support are likely to be accepted more quickly than papers written without PMW assistance (14.4% months versus 36.7 months) and are associated with different complexities. Professionally written publications are often primary papers, post-doc analysis and systematic reviews rather than narrative reviews and case reports (Shah S, 2016).