ETHICS AND RESEARCH
• Can ethics be taught? • One school of thought : Graduate students have values and ethical standards firmly established that are difficult to change • Necessary to prepare them to recognize and deal with ethical issues

ROOT CAUSE
• Most cases of scientific misconduct is a lone scientist along with a set experiments or observations • Supposed to be steeped in scientific culture where truth is valued

Temptations?
• Joy of new discovery • Success breeds overconfidence and arrogance • Aspirations to security and career advancement

BALTIMORE CASE
• Case began with a result paper, written by Imanishi-Kari, and co-authored by Baltimore and three others • Postdoc O’Toole assigned to extend the work • Could not duplicate work for almost a year

Findings
• Data reported by Imanishi-Kari • Several pages of notes on experimental data found to be fabricated • She was strongly defended by Baltimore • When fraud proven, Baltimore forced to resigned as president of Rockefeller University

AUTHORSHIP
• Guidelines by International Committee of Medical Editors : - Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. The participation must include : (a) conception or design, or analysis and interpretation of data, or both;

(b) drafting the article or revising it for critically important intellectual content; and (c) final approval of the version to be published. Participation solely in the collection of data does not justify authorship

CASE FOR CONSIDERATION
• Scientist A, a junior member of Dept • Worked as postdoc before • Continue to work in areas allied to his mentor • Collaborated in number of papers before • Concerned That he is overshadowed by mentor • Glad to submit article on his own

• On receiving galley proof, surprised to see his mentor as co-author • Learnt from secretary, that before sending out, told to add his name on the final proof • When confronted, mentor felt that the topic discussed was extension of previous work done. • Work was extension done by A independently

PEER REVIEW
• Evaluation of a specialist’s work by others in same field • Consequences of specialization • Used to determine which projects to be funded, which articles to print and to judge msiconduct

BIASES?
• Specialists compete with one another, but fight collectively for their profession • Resists investigation – anonymous • Great ideas may be rejected • Granting agencies want certainty

PEER REVIEW FOR JOURNAL ARTICLES
Pro – Valuable services. Spot mistakes and sometimes fraud. Trial readership. In same field, and may value the article
Con – Permits self-interest, jealousy May reject extraordinary ideas in discussed in article

PEER REVIEW
• Follow up articles easily accepted. New ideas may be rejected • Publication lead to job and research grant

MISUSE OF PRIVILEDGED INFORMATION
• A preview of what is to be published • Obvious misuse – reject or delay acceptance of article • Usually untraceable

Case in point – Reviewers A and B rejected an article by C to ensure priority for an article of their own. Action detected because C happens to be the reviewer for their paper.

DISHONESTY IN RESEARCH
• Take several forms : • Trimming, cooking, forging, and plagiarism

Trimming
• Smoothing of irregularities to make data look extremely accurate and precise

Cooking
• Retaining only those results that fit the theory and discarding others • Physicist Robert A. Millikan (Nobel Prize Winner) – selected data for his famous paper on electronic charge. It contained an explicit statement “It was based not on selected group of data, but all of the drops experimented upon during 60 consecutive days”.

Forging
• Inventing some or all of the research data that are reported, and even reporting experiments to obtain the data that were never performed

Plagiarism
• Use of intellectual property of others without proper permission or credit • Exact words or data of another used without permission or credit is plagiarism • Quotations of short statements by others with proper credit permissible

Multiple Authorship
• A large number of scientists involved in inter-disciplinary research and they make contributions to the research – permissible

Multiple Authorship
• Desire for many publications – less honest • Needs publications to secure jobs – undesirable • Authors just because of position – not desirable