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by Janis Costello Ingham and Jennifer Horner
A well-known researcher, highly successful in obtaining extramural research funding and having a long list of publications, insisted that her name be included as an author on all publications emanating from her laboratory. A clinical scientist, testing the effects of an experimental treatment, compared scores from a treated group of participants to scores from a group of individuals from whom treatment was withheld. A university professor, serving as a reviewer of a manuscript submitted for publication in a research journal, provided copies of the manuscript to graduate students so that they could prepare their own critiques, as an educational exercise in peer review…
…An ambitious graduate student, when analyzing data collected for his master's thesis, changed the numbers in two experimental conditions to make the results fit his hypothesis. A young assistant professor, eager to bolster her publication record in time for her tenure review, included published findings from another scientist in a manuscript submitted for publication and reported them as her own. A busy senior scientist, mentoring several PhD and postdoctoral students, neglected to monitor their methods of data collection.
What do these cases have in common? All of them raise questions about breaches of research ethics or of research misconduct. The latter, defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in language adhered to by the National Institutes of Health, is: "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the scientific community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research. Misconduct does not include honest error or honest differences in interpretations or judgments of data."
Why should I be concerned about research misconduct? The consequences of violations of research ethics can be far-reaching. On moral grounds, society expects individuals to lead their lives with honesty and the utmost respect for the well-being of others (see Horner). These expectations are highest for those in positions of trust, who are responsible for the health, safety, and welfare of others-such as religious leaders, educators, and government officials. Ethical transgressions within these groups are considered especially abhorrent. And so it is with scientists, whose life's work is fundamentally about seeking truth (fact) and developing an understanding of natural and human phenomena. From the most theoretical of physicists to the most applied of clinical researchers, the underlying search for new knowledge is ultimately tied to the enhancement of human life. When those whose job it is to make discoveries and enrich our lives disregard principles of intellectual honesty, the credibility of science and those who perform that science is inestimably undermined.
What are the practical consequences of research misconduct? Recent confirmed cases of scientific misconduct are illustrative. In these cases fraudulent research activities derailed the development of a vaccine against hepatitis C, interfered with progress in understanding metastasis in prostate cancer, produced misleading data regarding auditory processing in Broca's aphasia, and misrepresented findings aimed at understanding chemical phenomena active in the edema associated with traumatic brain injury. The consequences of misconduct in one particular case, in which a graduate student falsified and fabricated data, were described as "adversely and materially affect[ing] the laboratory's ongoing research…by creating uncertainty about all his experimental results, necessitating verification and repetition of experiments, preventing the reporting of results for publication, and preventing the principal investigator from submitting a competitive renewal application for a NIH grant" (see ORI Annual Report). All of these examples underscore the point that the impacts of research misconduct are serious and far-reaching.
What should be done about research misconduct? As Chris Pascal, director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), has written recently, an important strategy to counteract occurrences of scientific misconduct is "…to instill key principles of responsible research into the mission, culture, and curricula of research institutions…In ORI's view, responsible research practices are critical to the quality of research. Education in these practices is necessary to develop researchers' skills and competencies not only in integrity issues, but also in the actual conduct of research."
Efforts to provide education regarding the responsible conduct of research (RCR) abound. (See the Web site of the newly formed RCR Education Consortium-http://rcrec.org-as an example, and the sidebar from Ingham that accompanies this article on page 24, for a typical curriculum.)
ASHA's Code of Ethics provides a modicum of guidance in regard to research ethics. Among the 18 statements dealing with this topic are items related to conflict of interest, assignment of credit and acknowledgment of sources, treatment of human research participants, and truthfulness (six items!).
Perhaps as important as any of these is item IV-I: "Individuals who have reason to believe that the Code of Ethics has been violated shall inform the Board of Ethics." All members of ASHA must adhere to this "duty to report" any known, verifiable acts of scientific misconduct so that the highest moral, ethical, and research standards are upheld in our discipline. Essentially all institutions also have reporting and investigatory mechanisms in place to deal with allegations of misconduct, and it is important to become familiar with the procedure used in one's place of employment. If each of us-scientist, teacher, student, clinician-accepts this difficult but important responsibility, and if RCR education becomes a meaningful part of our curricula, our discipline will advance not only the quality of what our research discovers, but also the ethics of how we manage the discovery process. Adherence to high research ethics standards is essential if we are to trust the science that underpins all that we do.
Janis Costello Ingham is professor of speech and hearing sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She served as ASHA's vice president for research and technology and is currently vice president for research and academic development for the Council of Graduate Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Researcher Town Meeting that she organized in 1998 was ASHA's first foray into issues of research ethics. Contact her by e-mail at jcingham@speech.ucsb.edu.
Jennifer Horner is an associate professor in the College of Health Professions, Medical University of South Carolina. She is program director of communication sciences and disorders and chair of the department of rehabilitation sciences. Horner, who also holds a JD degree from Boston University School of Law, completed a fellowship at the University of Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Contact her by e-mail at hornerj@musc.edu.
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