The Absent Professor: Why We Don't Teach Research Ethics and What to Do about It

Abstract

Research ethics education in the biosciences has not historically been a priority for research universities despite the fact that funding agencies, government regulators, and the parties involved in the research enterprise agree that it ought to be. The confluence of a number of factors, including scrutiny and regulation due to increased public awareness of the impact of basic research on society, increased public and private funding, increased diversity and collaboration among researchers, the impressive success and speed of research advances, and high-profile cases of misconduct, have made it necessary to reexamine how the bioscience research community at all levels provides ethics education to its own. We discuss the need to and reasons for making ethics integral to the education of bioscientists, approaches to achieving this goal, challenges this goal presents, and responses to those challenges.

Graduate Socialization in the Responsible Conduct of Research: A National Survey on the Research Ethics Training Experiences of Psychology Doctoral Students

“…The few studies on RCR preparedness across disciplines suggest that research ethics training lags behind students' valuing of these skills (Brown & Kalichman, 1998;Meyers, Reid & Quina, 1998). It is similarly intuitive that the RCR values explicitly communicated to students through formal departmental policies and direct mentor instruction as well as those implicitly communicated through faculty and mentor behaviors would promote expectations that all members of the discipline are obligated to act in similar ways (Eisen & Berry, 2002;Fisher, 2003Fisher, , 2009 NAS, 2002) …”

“…Although ethics complaints against psychological scientists are infrequent (APA, 2004(APA, -2008, like other disciplines, psychology has not escaped highly publicized cases of scientific misconduct (Needleman, 1993;Salter, 1998;Sprague, 1993). Violations of research ethics regulations and professional standards, whether born of lack of awareness or understanding of RCR requirements or of malicious intent, undermine the overall integrity of the research enterprise (Eisen & Berry, 2002;Steneck, 2001). In recent years, increased public awareness of the effect of basic science and clinical trials on public health policy and health services along with some highly publicized cases involving charges of scientific misconduct (Eisen & Berry, 2002;CRI, 1995;NAS, 2002) have led the Department of Health and Human Services to increase requirements for RCR training of investigators conducting federally funded research (PHS, 2000(PHS, , 2001 and prompted the Office of Research Integrity to provide guidelines on specific RCR core instructional areas.…”

A Theoretical Comparison of the Models of Prevention of Research Misconduct

“…Sustained efforts at educating all the researchers regarding misconduct issues are thought to be essential by several authors (Taubes, 1993;Rhodes, 2002;Eisen and Berry, 2002;Bruhn et al, 2002). In this way researchers learn from mistakes of others and avoid repeating the same mistakes themselves.…”

Teaching Engineering Students How to Recognize and Analyze Ethical Scenarios

“…Also, trying to fit in another class requirement in an already condensed curriculum may discourage students. Finding the resources needed to create a new stand-alone ethics course for an entire engineering department may also be problematic, as additional teachers may need to be hired to deliver the class 8 .…”

“…Implementing ethics into engineering curricula remains restrained by the perception that there is not enough time to adequately address ethics and cover all of the required technical content. Professors may simply touch upon the subject of ethics briefly or avoid the matter entirely 8 , and optional ethics classes are often avoided by engineering students due to lack of perceived importance 2 . There remains a critical need for an efficient, systematic means for integrating substantial training in ethical decision making within engineering curricula.…”