Unethical practices within medical research and publication – An exploratory study
Tóm tắt
The data produced by the scientific community impacts on academia, clinicians, and the general public; therefore, the scientific community and other regulatory bodies have been focussing on ethical codes of conduct. Despite the measures taken by several research councils, unethical research, publishing and/or reviewing behaviours still take place. This exploratory study considers some of the current unethical practices and the reasons behind them and explores the ways to discourage these within research and other professional disciplinary bodies. These interviews/discussions with PhD students, technicians, and academics/principal investigators (PIs) (N=110) were conducted mostly in European higher education institutions including UK, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic and Netherlands. Through collegiate discussions, sharing experiences and by examining previously published/reported information, authors have identified several less reported behaviours. Some of these practices are mainly influenced either by the undue institutional expectations of research esteem or by changes in the journal review process. These malpractices can be divided in two categories relating to (a) methodological malpractices including data management, and (b) those that contravene publishing ethics. The former is mostly related to “committed bias”, by which the author selectively uses the data to suit their own hypothesis, methodological malpractice relates to selection of out-dated protocols that are not suited to the intended work. Although these are usually unintentional, incidences of intentional manipulations have been reported to authors of this study. For example, carrying out investigations without positive (or negative) controls; but including these from a previous study. Other methodological malpractices include unfair repetitions to gain statistical significance, or retrospective ethical approvals. In contrast, the publication related malpractices such as authorship malpractices, ethical clearance irregularities have also been reported. The findings also suggest a globalised approach with clear punitive measures for offenders is needed to tackle this problem.
Tài liệu tham khảo
Adler AC, Stayer SA (2017) Bias Among Peer Reviewers. JAMA. 318(8):755. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.9186
Altman, LK (2006). For science gatekeepers, a credibility gap. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/health/02docs.html?pagewanted=all. Accessed 26 July 2019
Bero L (2017) Addressing Bias and Conflict of Interest Among Biomedical Researchers. JAMA 317(17):1723–1724. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.3854
Bik EM, Fang FC, Kullas AL, Davis RJ, Casadevall A (2018) Analysis and Correction of Inappropriate Image Duplication: the. Mol Cell Biol Exp. https://doi.org/10.1128/MCB.00309-18
Blatt M (2013) Manipulation and Misconduct in the Handling of Image Data. Plant Physiol 163(1):3–4. https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.113.900471
Bornmann L (2013) Research Misconduct—Definitions, Manifestations and Extent. Publications. 1:87–98. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications1030087
Bouter LM, Hendrix S (2017) Both whistle-blowers and the scientists they accuse are vulnerable and deserve protection. Account Res 24(6):359–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2017.1327814
Brainard J (2018) Rethinking retractions. Science. 362(6413):390–393. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.362.6413.390
Brall C, Maeckelberghe E, Porz R, Makhoul J, Schröder-Bäck P (2017) Research Ethics 2.0: New Perspectives on norms, values, and integrity in genomic research in times of even ccarcer resources. Public Health Genomics 20:27–35. https://doi.org/10.1159/000462960
Buljan I, Barać L, Marušić A (2018) How researchers perceive research misconduct in biomedicine and how they would prevent it: A qualitative study in a small scientific community. Account Res 25(4):220–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2018.1463162
Collins FS and Tabak LA (2014) Policy: NIH plans to enhance reproducibility. NATURE (Comment) - https://www.nature.com/news/policy-nih-plans-to-enhance-reproducibility-1.14586
Cosentino M , and Picozzi M (2013) Transparency for each research article: Institutions must also be accountable for research integrity. BMJ 2013;347:f5477 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f5477.
Directive 2004/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 February 2004 on the inspection and verification of good laboratory practice (GLP). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2004:050:0028:0043:EN:PDF. Accessed 07 Sep 2019
Eaton SE, Chibry N, Toye MA, Toye MA, Rossi S (2019) Interinstitutional perspectives on contract cheating: a qualitative narrative exploration from Canada. Int J Educ Integr 15:9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-019-0046-0
Edwards M, Roy (2017) Academic Research in the 21st Century: Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hypercompetition. Environ Eng Sci 34(1):51–61. https://doi.org/10.1089/ees.2016.0223
Fanelli D (2009) How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data. Plos One 4(5):e5738
Fanelli D (2010) Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data. PLoS One 5(4):e10271. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010271
Fang FC, Steen RG, Casadevall A (2012) Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications. PNAS 109(42):17028–11703. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1212247109
Ferguson C, Marcus A, Oransky I (2014) Publishing: Publishing: The peer-review scam. Nature (News review). 515(7528):480-2. http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-the-peer-review-scam-1.16400. Accessed 21 Nov 2019
Galbraith KL (2017) Life after research misconduct: Punishments and the pursuit of second chances. J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics 12(1):26–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/1556264616682568
Gøtzsche PC, Hróbjartsson A, Johansen HK, HaahrMT ADG, Chan A-W (2007) Ghost Authorship in Industry-Initiated Randomised Trial. Plos-Med. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040019
Hevner AR (2007) A Three Cycle View of Design Science Research. Scand J Inf Syst 19(2):4 https://aisel.aisnet.org/sjis/vol19/iss2/4
Jenn NC (2006) Common Ethical Issues In Research And Publication. Malays Fam Physician 1(2-3):74–76
John LK, Loewenstein G, Prelec D (2012) Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling. Psychol Sci. 23(5):524–532
Kornfeld DS, Titus SL (2016) (2016) Stop ignoring misconduct. Nature. 537(7618):29–30. https://doi.org/10.1038/537029a
Meadows, A. (2017). What does transparent peer review mean and why is it important? The Scholarly Kitchen, [blog of the Society for Scholarly Publishing.] [Google Scholar]
Ploug TJ (2018) Should all medical research be published? The moral responsibility of medical journal. Med Ethics 44:690–694
Preston A (2017) The future of peer review. Scie Am. Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-future-of-peer-review/
Rawat S, Meena S (2014) Publish or perish: Where are we heading? J Res Med Sci. 19(2):87–89
Resnik DB, Shamoo AE (2017) Reproducibility and Research Integrity. Account Res. 24(2):116–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2016.1257387
Satalka P, Shaw D (2019) How do researchers acquire and develop notions of research integrity? A qualitative study among biomedical researchers in Switzerland. BMC Med Ethics 20:72. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-019-0410-x
Shamoo AE (2016) Audit of research data. Account Res. 23(1):1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2015.1096727
Thomas SP (2018) Current controversies regarding peer review in scholarly journals. Issues Ment Health Nurs 39(2):99–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/01612840.2018.1431443.
Tijdink JK, Bouter LM, Veldkamp CL, van de Ven PM, Wicherts JM, Smulders YM (2016) Personality traits are associated with research misbehavior in Dutch scientists: A cross-sectional study. Plos One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163251
Titus SL, Wells JA, Rhoades LJ (2008) Repairing research integrity. Nature 453:980–982
Vera-Badillo, Marc Napoleonea FE, Krzyzanowskaa MK, Alibhaib SMH, Chanc A-W, Ocanad A, Templetone AJ, Serugaf B, Amira E, Tannocka IF, (2016) Honorary and ghost authorship in reports of randomised clinical trials in oncology. Eur J Cancer (66)1 doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejca.2016.06.023
Verhagen H, Aruoma OI, van Delft JH, Dragsted LO, Ferguson LR, Knasmüller S, Pool-Zobel BL, Poulsen HE, Williamson G, Yannai S (2003) The 10 basic requirements for a scientific paper reporting antioxidant, antimutagenic or anticarcinogenic potential of test substances in in vitro experiments and animal studies in vivo. Food Chem Toxicol. 41(5):603–610
www1 n.d.: https://retractionwatch.com/the-center-for-scientific-integrity/. Accessed 13 Nov 2019
www2 n.d.: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html. Accessed 07 July 2019
www3 n.d.: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/8/12/e024499/DC1/embed/inline-supplementary-material-1.pdf?download=true. Accessed 26 July 2019
www4n.d.: http://www.crn.nihr.ac.uk/learning-development/ - National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network (NIHR CRN) - Accessed 13 Nov 2019
www5 n.d.: https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/forms-policies-and-checklists/scientific-misconduct. Accessed 07 July 2019
www6 n.d.: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html - Accessed 0 July 2019
www7 n.d.: http://www.singaporestatement.org. Accessed 10 Aug 2019
Zimmerman SV (2017), "The Canadian Experience: A Response to ‘Developing Standards for Research Practice: Some Issues for Consideration’ by James Parry", Finding Common Ground: Consensus in Research Ethics Across the Social Sciences (Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity, Vol. 1) Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 103-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2398-601820170000001009