Tag: research ethics (Page 6 of 8)

Macchiarini and the spirit of fraudulence

10 February, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

I assume you heard of Paolo Macchiarini, the “star surgeon” who, with the willpower of a general, simply would win a great battle at the frontline of research – by creating new tracheae using the patients’ own stem cells. That the endeavor had costs in terms of a few soldiers’ or patients’ lives is sad, but some losses must be accepted if one is to win a major battle in the service of cutting-edge experimental research.

It is difficult to avoid such an interpretation of Macchiarini’s mindset, after seeing the Swedish TV-documentaries about him (“Experimenten”/”The Experiments”). You feel the presence of a dominating iron will to carry out a plan and to win. It feeds a warlike spirit in which collegial doubts must be suppressed because they corrupt the morale and slow down the march forward, toward the frontline.

Truth is, as we know, the first casualty of war. Losses must be described as successes, in order not to lose readiness for action in the final battle – which, of course, will be won, don’t for a moment doubt that! The condition of patients who after surgery barely can breathe must thus be described as if the surgery had given them a nearly normal respiratory function. Macchiarini’s misconduct follows the logic of war.

Imagine this rigid winner, waiting impatiently for patients for whom his unproven methods (with some good will) could be interpreted as a last chance to survive. Does he approach the patients as a doctor who wants to offer a last treatment option? Hardly, but the possibility of interpreting the situation in such a way takes him to the frontline: he gets the opportunity to operate on them.

Does he then relate to the patients as a researcher to his participants? Not that either. For the treatment is only improvised in the heat of battle and can hardly even be called experimental; and all failures will be covered up by more scientific fraudulence.

The fact that research ethics developed in the shadow of the Second World War is hardly a coincidence. Something that worries in the Macchiarini case is that research itself – with its competition for funding and more – obviously can be animated by a warlike and strategic spirit of winning, which corrupts individuals as well as institutions…

It goes without saying that suspected research misconduct should not be investigated by the universities themselves; that there is a need for an independent body that handles such matters.

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Online course in research ethics, spring 2016

27 January, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Anyone who manages research also needs to be able to reflect on research. Not only the researchers themselves, but also funding bodies, journal editors, members of research ethics committees, administrators, journalists, organizations, politicians, and others.

How do you act if you suspect research misconduct, and what is it? What are the ethical and legal regulations governing data management or research on humans and animals?

If you want to learn more about these issues, or perhaps about publication ethics and authorship rules, conflicts of interest, mentor/trainee responsibilities, biosecurity and more – then we can help you. We give an online course in research ethics for medicine and the life sciences.

The course runs for ten weeks, from April 4 to June 10, every week with its own theme (the last week is devoted to sharing what you learned with your home institution). The course includes video lectures and texts to read, but also interactive exercises and regular e-meetings with other students and with the teacher.

The course is given in English and is open to students from all over the world. If you want to know what some of the former students have to say about the course, you can read more here. And if you want to know who the course is aimed at, read more here.

Research ethical responsibility is vital and it is important that ethics education reaches out. The course fee is € 1.125 (including tax), and to students who cannot receive financial support from their home institution we offer a limited number of scholarships for which application deadline is February 15.

If you don’t need a scholarship you can apply for the course until course start.

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Articles may be retracted if ethics is neglected

30 September, 2015 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

When a scientific article is retracted, it means that the article should never have been published and that data and conclusions from the study should not be used to underpin future research.

Articles are often retracted when it is found that the authors acted fraudulently. They may have been careless, or cheated, or have plagiarized someone else’s (or their own!) previous work. Retracted articles may still be available for reading, but with a notice that they are retracted, and with explanations of the reasons behind the decision.

A rarer and less known reason to retract scientific articles is that the study reported does not satisfy ethical requirements for the protection of research participants.

Human research participation should be voluntary and research on humans must first be approved by an ethical review board. Editors of medical journals are bound by the same requirements. They increasingly require that authors state that the research they want to publish has an ethics approval.

How common is it that published articles are retracted because ethical requirements were neglected? How do editors motivate their decision? And what happens afterwards – are the articles cited and used despite the retraction?

Ethical retractions are uninvestigated, but in an article in the journal Accountability in Research Yusuke Inoue (former guest researcher at CRB) and Kaori Muto, present a study of articles retracted for ethical reasons:

Noncompliance with human subjects’ protection requirements as a reason for retracting papers

One difficulty they mention is that unethical research may still produce scientifically valid data, results and conclusions – although neglect of ethics is a strong warning sign that other demands may have been neglected. Editors must therefore strike a balance between the requirement to retrospectively protect research participants and the scientific value of the article and its results. And if one decides to retract the article for ethical reasons, the research study may have to be repeated with new participants, which is also ethically problematic.

Yusuke Inoue and Kaori Muto studied retracted medical papers in English in the period 1981-2011. They found that the first ethical retractions did not occur until 2000 (2 articles). The number was then relatively constant (14 articles 2001-2010), but increased dramatically in 2011 (83 articles) – most of them related to a research scandal around anesthesiology researcher Joachim Boldt.

Most retraction notices stated as reason for the decision, simply “lack of ethical review.” However, editors rarely explained the decision more closely, for example, if they judged that the whole study was fraudulent, or judged that the study was well done but lacked ethical review. It then becomes unclear how to assess the contents of the retracted article.

Inoue and Muto also found that the majority of articles that were retracted for ethical reasons continued to be quoted. In some cases, it could be established that citations were deliberately misleading (as when authors cite their own retracted articles without mentioning that they are retracted). In other cases, however, retracted articles were cited perfectly legitimately, to specify that data from them had been excluded.

Inoue and Muto’s conclusion is that editors need to explain more clearly the reason behind their ethical retractions, so that future researchers can better assess the content of the articles. Moreover, discussion is needed on how data from articles that were retracted for ethical reasons may be used.

While we’re discussing scientific misconduct, I take the opportunity to link to an American dissertation that shows that often when misconduct is revealed by the Office of Research Integrity, it does not lead to the retraction of articles:

An assessment of retractions as a measure of scientific misconduct and impact on public health risks

The number of retracted articles thus gives a poor measure of the extent of scientific misconduct. There are many “fraudulent articles” in circulation!

Pär Segerdahl

Openness as an ethical ritual

3 August, 2015 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Barbara A. Koenig wrote last year about how informed consent has acquired a “liturgical feel” in biomedical research ethics. Each time the protection of research participants is challenged by new forms of research, the answer is: more consent!

The procedure of informing and asking for consent may feel like assuming a priestly guise and performing an ethical ritual with the research participant.

The ritual is moreover sometimes practically impossible to implement. For example, if one is to inform participants in genetic research about incidental findings that might be made about them, so that they can decide whether they want to be re-contacted if researchers happen to discover “something” about them.

If it takes one hour to inform a patient about his or her actual genetic disease, how long would it take to inform a research participant of all possible kinds of genetic disease risks that might be discovered? Sorry, not just one participant, but hundreds of thousands.

How then can research participants be respected as humans, if informed consent has become like an empty ritual with the poor participant? (A ritual that in genetic research sometimes is impracticable.)

In the August issue of Nature, Misha Angrist suggests a solution: we treat participants as partners in the research process, by being open to them. How are we open to them? By offering them the researchers’ genetic raw data, which can be handed over to them as an electronic file.

Here we are not talking about interpreted genetic disease risks, but of heaps of genetic raw data that are utterly meaningless for research participants.

Openness often has important functions. Making scientific articles openly accessible so that everyone can read them has a function. Making researchers’ data available to other researchers so that they can critically review research, or use already collected data in new research, has a function.

But offering files with genetic raw data to research participants, what is its function? Is it really the beginning of a beautiful partnership?

Openness and partnership seem here to become yet another ethical ritual; yet another universal solution to ethical difficulties.

Pär Segerdahl

Online research ethics: A pedagogic challenge

19 May, 2015 / Stefan Eriksson / 0 Comments

Researchers, scientists and professionals who are somehow involved in research, need to develop an ability to detect ethical problems. But we also need to learn how to do something about them. – How can we learn?

The Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB) has developed a web-based training in research ethics. And now we are looking forward to a pedagogic challenge!

Research ethics is not only following rules and regulations. It is also about training your ethical competence. We have decided to use a new approach: a web based training that requires commitment from both teacher and student.

We emphasize interactivity. Research ethics is about learning from history and understanding how norms affect what we do. But research ethics is also about reflecting on your own attitudes and actions. This is why we believe that talking with others is important. We have added e-meetings to the training where we give every participant opportunities to discuss research ethical problems. In addition, every lesson has a theme and we use chatrooms to discuss related cases.

Last term we tested this concept on participants from Europe, Egypt and Singapore. Now it is time to launch our training and open it for participants from all over the world. Our aim is high: We want to offer the most complete, updated end enjoyable training you can imagine!

Online distance training has some advantages in itself: It is flexible for the student, relatively cheap and there are good opportunities to have individual support for your studies. Add the possibilities that a modern, digital learning environment can offer: video films that can be interactive, e-meetings, quizzes, TED lectures, discussions in chat rooms and more offer opportunities for both variety and having fun, learning and reflection on several different platforms. Sites that allow users to try randomizing participants in a study can create a greater understanding of how it is done rather than just reading about it. We collect all these resources in one place for students to reach whenever they want. This way, the focus is on students learning instead of teaching.

Having students from different backgrounds adds strength to the training, but it is also a challenge. An important aspect is to try and capture the different experiences and circumstances they bring to the course. Coming from different cultural environments, they will meet different challenges when they try to implement an ethical stance in their work. Participants can learn a lot from each other and increase their understanding of the conditions that other’s work under. But positions and traditions can also seem difficult to understand, or hard to put forth to others.

Distance learning risks creating a situation where some participants are unable to take responsibility for their studies and hesitate to ask for help. Creating a positive, allowing atmosphere is not something that can be realized through the design of tasks or user interfaces (although those things matter too). It is something that you convey by the way to act towards others. There is a challenge for the teacher here: trying not to inhibit the student’s activities, or ending up on the outside of the group’s dynamic and development.

As a teacher, you soon realize that you have to work hard on both content and form. A difficulty is balancing the student’s freedom to plan the work to fit a schedule (that is probably quite busy already), with the aim to have interactive parts of the training that everyone has to be there for: both in time and progress. During the pilot it became obvious that students found it hard to follow the common time plan.

In the end, when people from different places can meet each other in a learning environment, exciting opportunities present themselves. One course can mix traditional teaching with different pedagogic models and technology. The challenge lies in finding a balance between the focus the training needs and the freedom that is so appreciated, and between structure and the endless pedagogic possibilities that this format offers. For the teacher, the task becomes to organize and guide students on the different paths that move them along in their individual learning processes. A challenge that I find both enjoyable and important!

Want to try it? Go to www.ethicstraining.crb.uu.se

Stefan Eriksson

Bioethics behind the facade: research and new thinking

28 January, 2015 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

The finished result easily becomes a picture of the process of achieving it. For example: We hear a Beethoven symphony and think that the genius had this magnificent composition in his head. He just needed to write it down.

As if the result existed from the beginning and only needed to be put on paper. I don’t know much about Beethoven’s working process, but doubt that it consisted in writing down already completed symphonies. Maybe, during a walk, a tiny idea entered his mind: a theme that made an impression on him, but that definitely was not the finished symphony. Thereafter, he explored the theme, attentive to where it wanted to go and letting it evolve in different forms and variations. Maybe he examined the theme at the piano.

Only gradually did this creative work shift to actually sitting down and composing. But still, as an exploration of the theme, albeit in the final phase of the process. And maybe it turned out that the theme worked better for a string quartet instead.

Bioethics is often misunderstood as we misunderstand Beethoven. We identify bioethics (and research ethics) with the finished result: with ethical guidelines, with the declaration of Helsinki, with models of consent, with the system of ethical review etcetera.

Bioethicists then appear like people who just put ethical rules on paper and establish bureaucratic systems to check that they are followed by researchers.

Bartha M. Knoppers recently questioned that image, in an article with the significant title:

Does policy grow on trees?

Ethical frameworks for biomedical research originate in processes of ethical research and thinking, often in dialogue with researchers in the field, and with patients and the public. Behind the facade, bioethics is an art of conversation as well as explorative research and new thinking. This work is not the least self-critical, for the ethical frameworks need to be constantly modified and sometimes partially dismantled.

An example of this work behind the facade is a new book on the regulation of biobanking, edited by Deborah Mascalzoni at CRB:

Ethics, Law and Goverance of Biobanking

In this book, a number of researchers present their explorations. It gives you insight into the work processes and the conversations and debates behind the regulation of research.

One principal problem raised in the book is that regulatory systems have become increasingly complex and opaque. Should we then create even more regulation?

Deborah Mascalzoni thinks that ethical research is more than just researchers following rules written by bioethicists. Instead of facing new challenges with even more regulation, she points out that all of us can think ethically, and that scientists have a moral responsibility to reflect on how they develop their research practices.

Ethics need not be a burden for research but can be a living concern within it. It can grow and flourish with the research practices, if we dare to do what Beethoven did: trust that seemingly insignificant thoughts and ideas can grow into something beautiful and real.

Pär Segerdahl

Learning ethics online

26 November, 2014 / Stefan Eriksson / 0 Comments

As you read this, PhD students, researchers and professionals from Egypt, Singapore, Germany, Italy and Sweden are busy discussing publication ethics online. Next week the topic is situations where research results can be used to harm. They are trying a new kind of online research ethics training. The idea is to give them hands-on knowledge and a sense of responsibility. But can you do that online?

The hope is of course that the feeling of responsibility stays with you after you have completed the training and can be mobilised if and when you run into an ethical dilemma. The goal of any ethics training, whether online or in a classroom, should be to help the participants to become better at reflecting on their own pre-conceptions and values. And learn to put those in relation to research ethical dilemmas. In the long run, we believe this is how you can help the scientific community to uphold research integrity.

There is increasing demand on research ethics training from funding agencies and universities. At the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics we decided to challenge ourselves to make good training available to everyone who needs it, regardless of where they are in the world. As we write this, both of us, Stefan Eriksson and Josepine Fernow, are part of an exciting journey as teacher and student. Right now the first pilot version of the course is running and we are able to see for ourselves if it is possible to meet that goal online.

For Stefan, as developer and teacher, the aim has been to create a course that is both fun and interactive, and where everything you need is available in one place. The main driving force behind our decision to create this course came from the funding agencies. The US National Institutes of Health has raised a demand for formal training from everyone who applies for funding for research on humans. But most of the online courses available are not interactive enough and doesn’t meet their demands on content. We decided to rise to the challenge and it turns out an online course can be much more interactive than you might think at first glance.

What are the upsides to online training? For Josepine, as a student, of course there is the practical side to being able to work at your own pace. And it is convenient to have everything you need to read, watch and do available freely on the Internet. With this course it turns out it was possible to get the advantages of an online course without losing out on interaction with other participants. The discussion format to some extent also forces you to formulate and express your opinion. That isn’t always the case in a classroom full of other students.

The course is made to fit everyone from graduate student to senior researcher. It works for professionals and officials from funding agencies and research ethics committees and everyone else who needs to be aware of and handle research ethics in one form or the other. In the pilot training we are running now it has become clear that there are only advantages to having a broad range of students. The fact that the people in the course have different backgrounds and nationalities adds a bonus: Discussing with people with different roles in different organizations, from different countries, with different cultures, and different regulatory systems serves to show that at the end of the day, we are all just people. And as people, we need to be able to mobilise our sense of responsibility when faced with research ethical dilemmas.

Stefan Eriksson, Associate Professor of Research Ethics

Josepine Fernow, Co-ordinator

The Ethics Blog soon as a book

15 October, 2014 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

As you may have noticed, I have for some time not posted quite as often as before. That is because I’m right now compiling previous posts, turning the Ethics Blog into a book.

I thought it would go quickly to make a blog book. But it takes time to choose appropriate texts and arrange them around different themes. And then edit the texts so they are nice to read in printed form.

Actually, I’m working on two books. There is a Swedish version of the Ethics Blog: “Etikbloggen” (link in the right margin). The text for the English book was sent to a graphic designer just a while ago. It will be exciting to see the results!

Both books will be printed in December. Hopefully we can also make them available in PDF format.

Now you know! Perhaps posting will be a bit sporadic for a few weeks, while I continue to work with the text for the Swedish blog book.

Pär Segerdahl

Plagiarism: what is it and what makes it wrong?

25 August, 2014 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Science is an advanced collective enterprise. Even the most original researcher inevitably builds on the achievements of other researchers. They deserve credit, and transparency facilitates research and makes it possible to scrutinize the original work. The art of giving due credit to other researchers is therefore part and parcel of scientific practice.

It is a well-known fact, however, that this art isn’t always practiced impeccably. Plagiarism is a growing concern in the research community, not least for editors of scientific journals. The causes of plagiarism may vary: ignorance of the techniques of quotation and their importance, momentary forgetfulness, or an intention to cheat and steal others’ work.

When defining plagiarism, it is tempting to focus on the intentional cases that imply dishonesty. However, from the point of view of the significance that giving due credit has in the collective enterprise of science, it is important to resist that temptation.

A recent article in Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy defines plagiarism while avoiding the focus on intentional plagiarism. Gert Helgesson and Stefan Eriksson define plagiarism as:

“An instance of someone using someone else’s intellectual product (such as texts, ideas, or results), thereby implying that it is their own.”

Researchers often use others’ intellectual products. It is the latter part of the definition that specifies what makes such a use a case of plagiarism: using someone else’s intellectual product in such a manner that it implies that it is one’s own. This implies that even a well-intended attempt to be honest can be a case of plagiarism. Suppose that a colleague gives you permission to freely use a text he or she created. If you use it in a manner that implies that you created it, you are plagiarizing.

The value of the suggested definition of plagiarism, as I see it, is that it is rigorously adapted to the significance that giving due credit has in science as a collective enterprise. The intention to deceive certainly makes plagiarism more reprehensible, but it is not primarily what makes plagiarism a concern in science.

The authors thus highlight that what makes plagiarism wrong in research is above all that it distorts scientific credit.

Pär Segerdahl

Research ethics as moral assurance system

19 March, 2014 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Modern society seems to be driven by skepticism. As philosophers systematically doubted the senses by enumerating optical and other illusions, our human ability to think for ourselves and take responsibility for our professional activities is doubted by enumerating scandals and cases of misconduct in the past.

The logic is simple: Since human practices have a notorious tendency to slide into the ditch – just think of scandals x, y and z! – we must introduce assurance systems that guarantee that the practices remain safely on the road.

In such a spirit of systematic doubt, research ethics developed into what resembles a moral assurance system for research. With reference to past scandals and atrocities, an extra-legal regulatory system emerged with detailed steering documents (ethical guidelines), overseeing bodies (research ethics committees), and formal procedures (informed consent).

The system is meant to secure ethical trustworthiness.

The trustwortiness of the assurance system is questioned in a new article in Research Ethics, written by Linus Johansson together with Stefan Eriksson, Gert Helgesson and Mats G. Hansson.

Guidelines, review and consent aren’t questioned as such, however. (There are those who want to abolish the system altogether.) The problem is rather the institutionalized distrust that makes the system more and more formalized, like following a checklist in a mindless bureaucracy.

The logic of distrust demands a system that does not rely on the human abilities that are doubted. That would be self-contradictory. But thereby the system does not support human abilities to think for ourselves and take responsibility.

The logic demands a system where humans become what they are feared being.

The cold logic of distrust is what needs to be overcome. Can we abstain from demanding more detailed guidelines and more thorough control, next time we hear about a scandal?

The logic of skepticism is not easily overcome.

Pär Segerdahl

Tag: research ethics (Page 6 of 8)

Macchiarini and the spirit of fraudulence

Online course in research ethics, spring 2016

Online research ethics: A pedagogic challenge

Bioethics behind the facade: research and new thinking

Learning ethics online

The Ethics Blog soon as a book

Plagiarism: what is it and what makes it wrong?

Welcome to the Ethics Blog!

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Follow the Ethics Blog via e-mail

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Welcome to the Ethics Blog!

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