Ethics
Considerations in Social
and Evaluative Research
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Intent of Research
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Discovery and creation of knowledge/theory building
(Basic Research)
Testing, confirmation, revision, refutation of
knowledge or theory (Applied Research)
Public policy input (e.g., information policy) (Public
Policy Research)
Investigation of a problem for local decision making
or planning (Action Research)
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Evaluation Research
Trends
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Co-authored works: individual vs. teams
Funding
Mentoring
Ethics in Conducting Research
Issues and Concerns
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Ethical Issues/ Areas of Concern
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Dishonesty with participants
Lying about, or hiding, the actual purpose of the
research
Passive deception
Unobtrusive observation
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Why might we do it?
What are some results
Milgram experiment, Tuskegee experiment, Tea Room
Trade, etc.
Anthropology
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Some anthropologists may have conducted
questionable experiments on Amazon tribes. They
fomented deadly disease and violence and they
observed the consequences--injecting the
Yanomami with a controversial vaccine for measles
(lack a natural immunity to it); the vaccine causes
measles-like symptoms and has proved deadly
They also staged fights among tribal members and
encourage violence
Do Ethical Issues Comprise
Misconduct?
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Business professor at Columbia University
wrote a letter on business school stationery
to the owners of about 250 restaurants in
NYC, complaining that he had been stricken
with food poisoning after dinner at their
establishments. He stated that he and his
wife went to the restaurant to celebrate a
wedding anniversary but ended up in the
bathroom, vomiting.
In fact, he was doing an “experiment” to
compare how business owners responded to
polite customer complaints versus how they
responded to complaints from enragedsounding customers.
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How about …
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…Researchers [in a study conducted in mid-1990s]
enticed landlords to recruit 108 families with healthy
children to live in row houses with varying degrees of
lead contamination to measure the effectiveness of
lead-abatement projects in the city’s poor areas. The
parents say they didn’t know the row houses had
lead paint, and were told too late by the researchers
that their children were being put at risk.
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Boston Globe (9/3/2001, p. 1)
Ethical Issues
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Informed Consent
Institutional Review/ Human Subjects
Conflict of Interest for Researchers
Ethical Considerations in the
Collecting and Analyzing Data
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Ethical Concerns
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Fabrication of data
Fudging
Carelessness/ lack of thorough research
In 2004, Health and Human Services received 247
complaints of misconduct in research- 50% higher
than the year before (MSNBC, charges of fake
research reach a new high,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8474936/)
Deceivers:
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Some …
Students (high school up):
Teachers trying to educate
their students (e.g., falsified
home pages)
Faculty members
Medical researchers
Journalists
Governments (mislead or
disguise)
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How about the private
sector:
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Businesses
Corporations
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Students (continued)
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Faculty
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Failure to repay intellectual debt in what they use/cite
Inaccurate references
Failure to obtain permission for quotations, figures, and
adaptations of figures placed in scholarly articles
Failure to repay intellectual debt and inaccurate references
Place article on home page contrary to journal/ publisher
specifications (publisher agreement)
Visual Deception—
Digital Forgery
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When is seeing believing
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Digital technology enables manipulation of images:
subversion of the certainty of photographic evidence
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Workers at plant (six African-American workers became
“mysteriously white and an Indian executive had lost his beard
and turban): Newsweek (March 4, 1996), p. 55
Abraham Lincoln and Marilyn Monroe
George H. Bush and Margaret Thatcher
Photo of fictitious meeting between then President Clinton and
Saddam Hussein
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Examples
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“A key study pointing to the effectiveness of highdose chemotherapy and bone marrow treatments in
treating metastatic breast cancer was based on
faked data (Arizona Republic, April 27, 2001)
One researcher in Vermont falsified data and made
up research on menopause, aging and hormonal
supplements over 8 years, and obtained over
$500,000 in federal research grant money(MSNBC,
2005).
Examples
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Merck is being accused of inventing an entire
journal- the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint
Medicine- and passing it off as an independent peerreviewed publication
(http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/
04/merck_accused_of_launching_fak.html)
A highly regarded humanities professor at the
University of California at San Diego listed “a
bachelor’s degree from Grambling College on his
CV.” He claimed to have graduated in 1963. In fact,
he had no college diploma (The Chronicle of Higher education, April 4,
2003, P. A10)
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1995 Paper on “Coping with
Discrimination”
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“has been cited in more than 50 psychology
studies, according to the Social Sciences
Citation Index. The author fabricated three
experiments in the above article and one
more.
The fabrications were part of federallyfunded research
Ethical Concerns: Presentation of
Findings and Publication
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Plagiarism
Gratuitous co-authoring
Inaccurate referencing
Gratuitous co-authorship, premature
publication, duplicate publication
Northern Kentucky University
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Five professors (the entire finance department)
accused by the University “of fabricating data in
scholarly papers, duplicating large chunks of their
own work in several papers, plagiarizing and listing
as authors a number of professors at the university
who did not contribute.”
“The same sets of data and results were used in
multiple papers but were attributed to different
studies. … passages [were] duplicated in several
papers.”
Or …
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“The editor of American Psychologist … has reneged
on an agreement to publish an article critical of the
journal’s sponsor and of several members of
Congress. … In … [that article, the author] charges
the American Psychological Association with caving
in to congressional pressure when it apologized for
an article about child sexual abuse” [The Chronicle of Higher
Education, online, 05/23/2001; 05/28/1999]
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Notice of Retraction
“Of the eight persons names as authors of the article
[one that appeared in print], some claimed that they
had never reviewed the original data and most
claimed that they had not seen or approved either
the original version or one or more of the three
revised versions of the manuscript One author
claimed that he had seen neither the original data
nor any version of the manuscript. Thus, there was a
egregious disregard of the principles of authorship …
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“During the review process, several of the
authors’ signatures were falsified by a
coauthor (who later confirmed to us that he
had done this)”
Gregory D. Curfman, “Editorial: Notice of Retraction,” The New England Journal
of Medicine (March 6, 2003)
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PLEDGE REQUIRED (IN WRITING)
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Prior to manuscript review, each author attest to (1)
his/her authorship of the paper, (2) the fact that
he/she had access to all study data, the freedom to
analyze the data as he/she saw fit, and the authority
to publish the findings regardless of the implications
for companies funding the research
The journal then sends each author an email when
the accepted has been accepted.
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A study by Dr. John M. Budd et al. in the Journal of
the American Medical Association (July 15, 1998)
examined 235 scientific journal articles that had
been formally retracted due to error, misconduct,
failure to replicate results, or other reasons. The
researchers reported that, “Retracted articles
continue to be cited as valid works in the biomedical
literature after publication of the retraction.”
Of All the Questions That Remain
Unanswered,
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the simple one, “How much misconduct is
there?,” has inspired the most debate.
How much?
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Hard to estimate- may only be a small fraction of
total
H&HS reports 185 cases of misconduct over 15
years.
Science journal Nature claims only 1.5% of over
3,000 researchers admitted to falsification or
plagiarism
… But one in three admit to “some type” of
professional misbehavior
Summary of Types of Problems
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Lack of honoring of
“intellectual debt:” lifting the
work of others without
attribution. The intentional
mis-characterization of
works of others
Falsifying data/experiments/
research findings
Falsifying CVs
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While reviewing research
proposals, turning one down
and later submitting the
same proposal yourself
Filling out some
questionnaires yourself or
some of the questions
Gratuitous co-authorship,
premature publication,
duplicate publication
Examples of Journals in Which Misconduct
Has Appeared
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American Journal of
Medicine
Cell
Clinical Research
Journal of the American
Chemical Society
The Lancet
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New England Journal of
Medicine
Science
Tumor Research
Is the Problem That Serious?
There are only a few
isolated incidents
 Whatever appears in print, is
true? (Even in peer reviewed
journals)
 Science, after all, is selfcorrecting
Governments never “lie”
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How about links between
corporate sponsorship and
conflicts of interest (e.g.,
medical research)
-- Researchers have a
significant financial stake in
companies sponsoring
research; researchers are
driven by financial motives,
including the need for
subsequent public or
private sector funding
Ethical Issues
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What are the implications of misconduct to
library collections
Can we rely on “science as self-correcting”
Where is the pressure coming from that
results in “misconduct”
Causes for Misconduct
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David Wright, a Michigan State University
professor who has researched why scientists
cheat, said there are four basic reasons:
some sort of mental disorder; foreign
nationals who learned somewhat different
scientific standards; inadequate mentoring;
and, most commonly, tremendous and
increasing professional pressure to publish
studies.
Misconduct Affects the
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Findings of research, government and nongovernment
What we read and hear
Scholarship, including the integrity of journals and
fields of study (e.g., publishing fraudulent research to
discredit a journal and a field of study)
educational system
Policies based on certain research
Library budgets
Other?
New Issue
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“Thumbing his nose at academe, a scholar tries to
auction his services,” The Chronicle of Higher
Education (May 28, 2004)
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An independent scientists auctioned his services as coauthor on eBay, with the promise of helping the highest
bidder write a scientific paper for publication
Web site offers $$ for people to write research papers
http://www.someuseless.info/130/academia-research-getpaid-to-write-academic-papers/
How Can We Attack the Problem
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Strengthen penalties on those convicted of misconduct
Review conflicts of interest guidelines
Require signed agreements from all authors; ensure that each one is
sent that agreement and returns it
Make more people aware of the issue (as the New England Journal of
Medicine has done)
Find ways to increases information literacy of various groups—e.g.,
locate and evaluate information before using it.
Do not assume the problem resides only with students
Become familiar with the Office of Research Integrity (Department of
Health and Human Services),
http://ori.hhs.gov/html/programs/instructresource.asp
How Can We Attack the Problem
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Resume congressional oversight hearings,
like done in early 1980s, for the purpose of
(1) greater public awareness and (2)
accountability for public monies spent
Increase knowledge of the research process,
among students in more social and
behavioral sciences
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Including requiring research methods in LIS
programs
How Can We Attack the Problem
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Continue to support committees that protect human
subjects, animals in research, etc.
Pressure universities to deal with the issue and have
proper guidelines for addressing the issue.
Tendency is to be silent on the issue: image
Correct bibliographic apparatus: need for retraction
and correction
Role of human and animal subject committees at
colleges and universities
What We Cannot Do
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Interfere with the integrity of the peer- review
process
Attack or discourage legitimate whistleblowing
Overvalue replication of social science research
(placing such research in peer-reviewed journals)
Assume that misconduct applies only to students
Assume that misconduct is an insignificant problem
Elsevier
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The ethical problems you may encounter include:
• Plagiarism
• Research results not being original to purported author
• Allegations about authorship of contributions
• Double submission
We have prepared a legal guide for you to help you deal with
such issues, which you can find at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/editorsinfo.editors/ethicshelpdesk
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Elsevier and PubMed
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Effective October 1, 2006, Wellcome Trust grantees
are required to submit an electronic copy of the final
manuscripts of their research papers into PubMed
Central (PMC), or UKPubMed Central (UKPMC)
once established. The Wellcome Trust requires that
the author’s work be made freely available to the
public, via PMC, no later than six months after the
official date of final publication (see
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/node3302.html for more
details of the Wellcome Trust policy).
Elsevier and PubMed (continued)
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The agreement with the Wellcome Trust allows
authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply
with these requirements. This new agreement is
intended to support the needs of Elsevier authors,
editors, and society publishing partners, and protect
the quality and integrity of the peer review process.
Information regarding this agreement is available on
Elsevier.com, at
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorshome.autho
rs/wellcometrustauthors
Copyright Permission
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Form to sign
Liability
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Use of quoted material
Poetry, tables/figures
Restricted manuscript
collections
Scholarly communication
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www.knowyourcopyrights.org/
www.arl.org/fair/
www.informationaccess.org/
Finally, authors should think about
titles of their publications
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Fending Off Attacks on Social Science
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http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/04/nsf