Lecture 6

Question 1

What are 3 key types of research misconduct? What are 4 additional areas of scientific dishonesty?

Answer 1

• Fabrication: making up results and recording or reporting them
• Falsification: manipulation of research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting results such that the research is not accurately represented in the record.
• Plagiarism: the appropriation of another’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving proper credit.
  1. Faulty data gathering procedures
  2. Poor data storage and retention

3.Misleading authorship:
Who should be an author?
Where does your name go?

4.Sneaky publication practices

Question 2

 Publish or Perish Pressure
 Desire to “get ahead”
 Personal problems
 Character issues
 Cultural Differences

What are these examples of?

Answer 2

Reasons why misconduct happens

Question 3

 Represents a significant departure from accepted practices
 Has been committed intentionally, or knowingly, or recklessly; and
 Can be proven by a preponderance of evidence

What are these criteria for?

What is not an example of criteria for the same thing?

Answer 3

Research misconduct

honest, unintentional error

Question 4

What did Dr. Eric Poehlman do? What were the consequences for him? What were the implications of this fraud for other people?

Answer 4

– Reversed the scoring on repeated data
– Accused his young colleagues of falsifying the data
– Obtained grant funding based on his false data (falsified 17 grant applications)
• ~$3 Million over 10 years

• Sentenced to 1 year plus a day in Federal Prison
• Pay $180,000 to settle civil complaints
• Pay $16,000 in attorney fees for research assistant who spurred the investigation
• Permanently barred from getting research grants
• Permanent exclusion from participating in all federal healthcare programs
• Write letters of retraction and correction to scientific journals

– Took away funding from valid research proposals!
– Affected studies related to disease prevention
• Health on older men and women
• Effects of diet and exercise on menopause status
• Hormone-replacement therapy
• Disease states
– Compromised the integrity of his co-authors and graduate students who did not know

Question 5

What was the timeline of Nancy Olivieri?

Answer 5

• 1996: Olivieri found that Deferiprone in a clinical trial at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto was showing unexpected potential risks to some patients; hepatic fibrosis
• Company sponsoring the research (Apotex) abruptly terminated the trial and issued warnings of legal action vs. Olivieri if she were to inform her patients or publish her findings, as it would violate their confidentiality agreement
• BUT – she published anyway in NEJM in 1998
• She was fired from her position as Director of the Hospital for Sick Children Program of
Hemoglobinopathies

Question 6

• Researcher is responsible for his/her participants
• Researcher is responsible for his/her own actions and those of any research aides
• Participants must provide informed consent
• Researcher protects participants from harm, danger, and discomfort
• Maintain anonymity and confidentiality
• Participants should not be coerced
• Researcher has responsibility after the investigation is complete to safeguard subject data
• Honest disclosure of results

What are these all examples of?

Answer 6

Ethical observations in research