American Chiropractic Association.the Ethics of Treating Friends, Family, Colleagues and Employees

by David B. Resnik, J.D., Ph.D.

December 23, 2020

The ideas and opinions expressed in this essay are the author's ain and practise not necessarily represent those of the NIH, NIEHS, or US government.

When about people remember of ethics (or morals), they call up of rules for distinguishing between right and wrong, such every bit the Golden Rule ("Exercise unto others every bit you would have them do unto you"), a lawmaking of professional conduct like the Hippocratic Oath ("Beginning of all, exercise no damage"), a religious creed like the X Commandments ("Thou Shalt not impale..."), or a wise aphorisms like the sayings of Confucius. This is the nigh mutual style of defining "ethics": norms for conduct that distinguish betwixt acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Most people learn ethical norms at home, at schoolhouse, in church building, or in other social settings. Although virtually people acquire their sense of right and incorrect during childhood, moral development occurs throughout life and man beings laissez passer through unlike stages of growth every bit they mature. Upstanding norms are so ubiquitous that i might be tempted to regard them as simple commonsense. On the other hand, if morality were zero more than commonsense, and so why are at that place so many ethical disputes and problems in our society?

1 plausible explanation of these disagreements is that all people recognize some common upstanding norms but interpret, employ, and balance them in different means in light of their ain values and life experiences. For example, two people could concord that murder is wrong but disagree about the morality of abortion because they take dissimilar understandings of what it means to exist a human being.

Most societies too have legal rules that govern behavior, but ethical norms tend to be broader and more informal than laws. Although most societies utilize laws to enforce widely accepted moral standards and ethical and legal rules use like concepts, ideals and law are non the aforementioned. An action may be legal only unethical or illegal but upstanding. We tin can also use ethical concepts and principles to criticize, evaluate, propose, or interpret laws. Indeed, in the terminal century, many social reformers have urged citizens to disobey laws they regarded equally immoral or unjust laws. Peaceful civil disobedience is an upstanding way of protesting laws or expressing political viewpoints.

Another manner of defining 'ethics' focuses on the disciplines that written report standards of acquit, such equally philosophy, theology, law, psychology, or folklore. For instance, a "medical ethicist" is someone who studies ethical standards in medicine. 1 may also define ethics every bit a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analyzing complex problems and issues. For instance, in considering a complex issue like global warming, one may take an economic, ecological, political, or ethical perspective on the problem. While an economist might examine the price and benefits of various policies related to global warming, an environmental ethicist could examine the ethical values and principles at stake.

Run into ideals in practice at NIEHS

Read latest updates in our monthly Global Environmental Wellness Newsletter

Many dissimilar disciplines, institutions, and professions have standards for behavior that suit their particular aims and goals. These standards too help members of the discipline to coordinate their deportment or activities and to establish the public's trust of the discipline. For example, upstanding standards govern conduct in medicine, law, technology, and business organization. Ethical norms besides serve the aims or goals of enquiry and use to people who conduct scientific inquiry or other scholarly or creative activities. There is even a specialized discipline, research ethics, which studies these norms. See Glossary of Commonly Used Terms in Inquiry Ethics.

There are several reasons why information technology is important to attach to upstanding norms in enquiry. First, norms promote the aims of inquiry, such equally knowledge, truth, and avoidance of mistake. For example, prohibitions against fabricating, falsifying, or misrepresenting enquiry data promote the truth and minimize mistake.

Join an NIEHS Report

See how we put research Ethics to exercise.

Visit Joinastudy.niehs.nih.govto meet the diverse studies NIEHS perform.

Second, since research ofttimes involves a great bargain of cooperation and coordination amidst many dissimilar people in different disciplines and institutions, ethical standards promote the values that are essential to collaborative piece of work, such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness. For example, many upstanding norms in inquiry, such as guidelines for authorship, copyright and patenting policies, data sharing policies, and confidentiality rules in peer review, are designed to protect intellectual property interests while encouraging collaboration. Virtually researchers desire to receive credit for their contributions and do not want to have their ideas stolen or disclosed prematurely.

3rd, many of the upstanding norms help to ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public. For instance, federal policies on research misconduct, conflicts of involvement, the human subjects protections, and animal care and use are necessary in gild to make sure that researchers who are funded by public money can exist held accountable to the public.

Fourth, ethical norms in research also help to build public support for research. People are more likely to fund a inquiry projection if they can trust the quality and integrity of inquiry.

Finally, many of the norms of research promote a variety of other important moral and social values, such as social responsibility, man rights, brute welfare, compliance with the law, and public health and safety. Ethical lapses in research can significantly harm human and animal subjects, students, and the public. For case, a researcher who fabricates data in a clinical trial may harm or fifty-fifty kill patients, and a researcher who fails to abide by regulations and guidelines relating to radiations or biological rubber may jeopardize his health and safety or the health and condom of staff and students.

Codes and Policies for Research Ethics

Given the importance of ethics for the conduct of research, it should come as no surprise that many dissimilar professional associations, government agencies, and universities have adopted specific codes, rules, and policies relating to research ethics. Many regime agencies accept ethics rules for funded researchers.

Ethical Principles

The following is a crude and general summary of some ethical principles that diverse codes address*:

Honesty

Strive for honesty in all scientific communications. Honestly report information, results, methods and procedures, and publication condition. Practice not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data. Do not deceive colleagues, enquiry sponsors, or the public.

Objectivity

Strive to avoid bias in experimental design, data analysis, information interpretation, peer review, personnel decisions, grant writing, expert testimony, and other aspects of research where objectivity is expected or required. Avoid or minimize bias or self-deception. Disclose personal or financial interests that may bear on enquiry.

Integrity

Continue your promises and agreements; act with sincerity; strive for consistency of thought and activity.

Carefulness

Avoid devil-may-care errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine your ain work and the piece of work of your peers. Proceed expert records of research activities, such every bit data drove, research blueprint, and correspondence with agencies or journals.

Openness

Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.

Transparency

Disclose methods, materials, assumptions, analyses, and other information needed to evaluate your research.

Accountability

Take responsibility for your part in enquiry and be prepared to give an account (i.e. an explanation or justification) of what you lot did on a inquiry projection and why.

Intellectual Property

Honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. Practise not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. Give proper acknowledgement or credit for all contributions to inquiry. Never plagiarize.

Confidentiality

Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication, personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient records.

Responsible Publication

Publish in order to accelerate research and scholarship, not to advance simply your own career. Avert wasteful and duplicative publication.

Responsible Mentoring

Help to brainwash, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to make their ain decisions.

Respect for Colleagues

Respect your colleagues and treat them adequately.

Social Responsibility

Strive to promote social good and prevent or mitigate social harms through research, public didactics, and advocacy.

Non-Discrimination

Avert discrimination against colleagues or students on the ground of sex activity, race, ethnicity, or other factors not related to scientific competence and integrity.

Competence

Maintain and better your own professional competence and expertise through lifelong education and learning; take steps to promote competence in science as a whole.

Legality

Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies.

Beast Care

Show proper respect and intendance for animals when using them in research. Do not bear unnecessary or poorly designed fauna experiments.

Human Subjects protection

When conducting research on human subjects, minimize harms and risks and maximize benefits; respect human dignity, privacy, and autonomy; have special precautions with vulnerable populations; and strive to distribute the benefits and burdens of inquiry fairly.

* Adapted from Shamoo A and Resnik D. 2015. Responsible Bear of Enquiry, third ed. (New York: Oxford University Press).

Ethical Conclusion Making in Inquiry

Although codes, policies, and principles are very important and useful, similar any prepare of rules, they practice not encompass every situation, they often conflict, and they crave considerable interpretation. It is therefore of import for researchers to acquire how to interpret, assess, and apply various enquiry rules and how to make decisions and to act ethically in various situations. The vast majority of decisions involve the straightforward awarding of ethical rules. For example, consider the following case,

Case 01

The enquiry protocol for a study of a drug on hypertension requires the assistants of the drug at different doses to 50 laboratory mice, with chemical and behavioral tests to determine toxic effects. Tom has about finished the experiment for Dr. Q. He has only 5 mice left to test. However, he actually wants to stop his work in time to go to Florida on spring break with his friends, who are leaving this evening. He has injected the drug in all fifty mice only has not completed all of the tests. He therefore decides to extrapolate from the 45 completed results to produce the 5 additional results.

Many different research ethics policies would hold that Tom has acted unethically by fabricating data. If this study were sponsored by a federal agency, such as the NIH, his actions would found a class of enquiry misconduct , which the government defines equally "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism" (or FFP). Actions that virtually all researchers allocate every bit unethical are viewed equally misconduct. Information technology is important to remember, however, that misconduct occurs only when researchers intend to deceive: honest errors related to sloppiness, poor tape keeping, miscalculations, bias, self-deception, and even negligence do non constitute misconduct. Also, reasonable disagreements about research methods, procedures, and interpretations do non constitute research misconduct. Consider the following case:

Case 02

Dr. T has just discovered a mathematical error in his paper that has been accepted for publication in a journal. The mistake does not affect the overall results of his research, just it is potentially misleading. The journal has simply gone to press, so it is likewise late to grab the error before it appears in print. In order to avoid embarrassment, Dr. T decides to ignore the fault.

Dr. T's fault is non misconduct nor is his conclusion to take no activity to right the fault. Most researchers, also as many dissimilar policies and codes would say that Dr. T should tell the journal (and whatever coauthors) almost the error and consider publishing a correction or errata. Failing to publish a correction would be unethical because it would violate norms relating to honesty and objectivity in research.

In that location are many other activities that the government does not ascertain as "misconduct" but which are withal regarded by virtually researchers as unethical. These are sometimes referred to as "other deviations" from adequate enquiry practices and include:

• Publishing the same paper in two unlike journals without telling the editors
• Submitting the same paper to different journals without telling the editors
• Non informing a collaborator of your intent to file a patent in order to make sure that you are the sole inventor
• Including a colleague as an author on a newspaper in render for a favor even though the colleague did non make a serious contribution to the paper
• Discussing with your colleagues confidential data from a newspaper that you are reviewing for a journal
• Using data, ideas, or methods y'all learn about while reviewing a grant or a papers without permission
• Trimming outliers from a data gear up without discussing your reasons in paper
• Using an inappropriate statistical technique in social club to raise the significance of your enquiry
• Bypassing the peer review process and announcing your results through a press conference without giving peers adequate information to review your work
• Conducting a review of the literature that fails to acknowledge the contributions of other people in the field or relevant prior work
• Stretching the truth on a grant awarding in guild to convince reviewers that your project will make a meaning contribution to the field
• Stretching the truth on a job application or curriculum vita
• Giving the same research project to two graduate students in order to see who tin do it the fastest
• Overworking, neglecting, or exploiting graduate or post-doctoral students
• Failing to keep skilful research records
• Failing to maintain research data for a reasonable period of fourth dimension
• Making derogatory comments and personal attacks in your review of writer'southward submission
• Promising a student a better grade for sexual favors
• Using a racist epithet in the laboratory
• Making significant deviations from the enquiry protocol approved by your institution'southward Creature Care and Use Commission or Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Enquiry without telling the committee or the board
• Non reporting an adverse event in a human research experiment
• Wasting animals in research
• Exposing students and staff to biological risks in violation of your institution'due south biosafety rules
• Sabotaging someone's work
• Stealing supplies, books, or data
• Rigging an experiment so you know how it volition turn out
• Making unauthorized copies of information, papers, or figurer programs
• Owning over $x,000 in stock in a company that sponsors your research and not disclosing this financial interest
• Deliberately overestimating the clinical significance of a new drug in order to obtain economic benefits

These deportment would be regarded as unethical by almost scientists and some might even be illegal in some cases. Most of these would likewise violate different professional ideals codes or institutional policies. However, they do non autumn into the narrow category of actions that the authorities classifies as research misconduct. Indeed, in that location has been considerable debate most the definition of "research misconduct" and many researchers and policy makers are not satisfied with the government'southward narrow definition that focuses on FFP. Nevertheless, given the huge list of potential offenses that might fall into the category "other serious deviations," and the practical bug with defining and policing these other deviations, it is understandable why government officials have called to limit their focus.

Finally, situations frequently ascend in research in which different people disagree about the proper form of activity and there is no wide consensus near what should be done. In these situations, in that location may be good arguments on both sides of the upshot and different ethical principles may conflict. These situations create hard decisions for research known every bit upstanding or moral dilemmas . Consider the following case:

Case 03

Dr. Wexford is the principal investigator of a large, epidemiological study on the health of 10,000 agricultural workers. She has an impressive dataset that includes information on demographics, ecology exposures, diet, genetics, and various disease outcomes such as cancer, Parkinson's disease (PD), and ALS. She has just published a paper on the human relationship between pesticide exposure and PD in a prestigious periodical. She is planning to publish many other papers from her dataset. She receives a request from some other inquiry team that wants access to her consummate dataset. They are interested in examining the human relationship between pesticide exposures and pare cancer. Dr. Wexford was planning to carry a study on this topic.

Dr. Wexford faces a difficult choice. On the 1 hand, the ethical norm of openness obliges her to share data with the other research team. Her funding agency may also take rules that obligate her to share data. On the other manus, if she shares information with the other team, they may publish results that she was planning to publish, thus depriving her (and her team) of recognition and priority. It seems that there are good arguments on both sides of this event and Dr. Wexford needs to have some time to remember most what she should practice. One possible option is to share data, provided that the investigators sign a information employ agreement. The agreement could define allowable uses of the data, publication plans, authorship, etc. Some other option would be to offer to collaborate with the researchers.

The following are some step that researchers, such equally Dr. Wexford, can take to deal with ethical dilemmas in research:

What is the problem or issue?

It is ever important to become a clear statement of the problem. In this case, the issue is whether to share data with the other inquiry team.

What is the relevant data?

Many bad decisions are made equally a result of poor information. To know what to do, Dr. Wexford needs to have more information concerning such matters every bit academy or funding agency or periodical policies that may apply to this situation, the team'southward intellectual property interests, the possibility of negotiating some kind of agreement with the other team, whether the other team also has some data it is willing to share, the impact of the potential publications, etc.

What are the different options?

People may fail to see unlike options due to a limited imagination, bias, ignorance, or fear. In this instance, there may be other choices besides 'share' or 'don't share,' such as 'negotiate an agreement' or 'offer to collaborate with the researchers.'

How exercise ethical codes or policies equally well equally legal rules apply to these different options?

The university or funding agency may take policies on data direction that apply to this case. Broader ethical rules, such every bit openness and respect for credit and intellectual property, may also apply to this instance. Laws relating to intellectual property may be relevant.

Are there any people who can offer ethical advice?

It may be useful to seek advice from a colleague, a senior researcher, your section chair, an ethics or compliance officeholder, or anyone else you tin can trust. In the case, Dr. Wexford might want to talk to her supervisor and research team earlier making a conclusion.

After considering these questions, a person facing an ethical dilemma may decide to ask more questions, gather more data, explore different options, or consider other ethical rules. However, at some point he or she will accept to make a decision and then take action. Ideally, a person who makes a determination in an upstanding dilemma should be able to justify his or her decision to himself or herself, as well as colleagues, administrators, and other people who might be affected by the conclusion. He or she should exist able to articulate reasons for his or her conduct and should consider the following questions in guild to explicate how he or she arrived at his or her decision: .

• Which choice will probably have the all-time overall consequences for science and society?
• Which selection could stand up upwards to further publicity and scrutiny?
• Which pick could y'all not alive with?
• Think of the wisest person you know. What would he or she practice in this state of affairs?
• Which choice would exist the virtually just, fair, or responsible?

After considering all of these questions, one withal might detect it difficult to determine what to practice. If this is the case, then it may be advisable to consider others ways of making the determination, such every bit going with a gut feeling or intuition, seeking guidance through prayer or meditation, or even flipping a coin. Endorsing these methods in this context need not imply that ethical decisions are irrational, however. The main point is that human reasoning plays a pivotal role in ethical decision-making but at that place are limits to its ability to solve all ethical dilemmas in a finite amount of fourth dimension.

Promoting Ethical Comport in Science

Most bookish institutions in the Us require undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate students to have some education in the responsible bear of research (RCR). The NIH and NSF accept both mandated training in enquiry ethics for students and trainees. Many academic institutions outside of the U.s.a. accept too adult educational curricula in research ethics

Those of you who are taking or have taken courses in research ethics may be wondering why you lot are required to have education in research ethics. You may believe that you are highly ethical and know the difference betwixt right and wrong. You would never fabricate or falsify information or plagiarize. Indeed, y'all also may believe that most of your colleagues are highly upstanding and that there is no ethics problem in research..

If yous experience this manner, relax. No one is accusing yous of acting unethically. Indeed, the evidence produced and so far shows that misconduct is a very rare occurrence in research, although there is considerable variation among various estimates. The rate of misconduct has been estimated to exist equally low as 0.01% of researchers per twelvemonth (based on confirmed cases of misconduct in federally funded research) to as loftier as i% of researchers per year (based on self-reports of misconduct on anonymous surveys). Encounter Shamoo and Resnik (2015), cited in a higher place.

Conspicuously, it would be useful to take more than data on this topic, but and so far in that location is no show that science has become ethically corrupt, despite some highly publicized scandals. Even if misconduct is just a rare occurrence, it can still have a tremendous impact on science and society because information technology can compromise the integrity of inquiry, erode the public's trust in science, and waste matter time and resource. Will teaching in inquiry ideals help reduce the rate of misconduct in science? It is too early on to tell. The answer to this question depends, in function, on how one understands the causes of misconduct. There are ii main theories about why researchers commit misconduct. Co-ordinate to the "bad apple tree" theory, most scientists are highly ethical. Just researchers who are morally corrupt, economically desperate, or psychologically disturbed commit misconduct. Moreover, only a fool would commit misconduct because science'south peer review system and self-correcting mechanisms will eventually grab those who try to cheat the organization. In any case, a course in research ideals volition take footling impact on "bad apples," one might argue.

Co-ordinate to the "stressful" or "imperfect" environment theory, misconduct occurs because various institutional pressures, incentives, and constraints encourage people to commit misconduct, such as pressures to publish or obtain grants or contracts, career ambitions, the pursuit of profit or fame, poor supervision of students and trainees, and poor oversight of researchers (run across Shamoo and Resnik 2015). Moreover, defenders of the stressful environment theory point out that science's peer review system is far from perfect and that it is relatively easy to cheat the system. Erroneous or fraudulent research often enters the public record without being detected for years. Misconduct probably results from environmental and individual causes, i.e. when people who are morally weak, ignorant, or insensitive are placed in stressful or imperfect environments. In any case, a course in research ethics can be useful in helping to forestall deviations from norms even if information technology does non prevent misconduct. Pedagogy in research ethics is can help people get a amend understanding of ethical standards, policies, and issues and ameliorate upstanding judgment and decision making. Many of the deviations that occur in enquiry may occur because researchers simply do non know or take never thought seriously about some of the upstanding norms of enquiry. For example, some unethical authorship practices probably reflect traditions and practices that have not been questioned seriously until recently. If the director of a lab is named as an author on every paper that comes from his lab, even if he does non brand a meaning contribution, what could exist wrong with that? That's just the way it'due south washed, i might argue. Another example where there may exist some ignorance or mistaken traditions is conflicts of interest in research. A researcher may recall that a "normal" or "traditional" financial relationship, such every bit accepting stock or a consulting fee from a drug company that sponsors her research, raises no serious ethical issues. Or perhaps a academy administrator sees no ethical problem in taking a large souvenir with strings attached from a pharmaceutical company. Maybe a physician thinks that it is perfectly appropriate to receive a $300 finder'south fee for referring patients into a clinical trial.

If "deviations" from upstanding bear occur in inquiry as a result of ignorance or a failure to reflect critically on problematic traditions, so a course in research ethics may help reduce the rate of serious deviations past improving the researcher's understanding of ideals and by sensitizing him or her to the bug.

Finally, educational activity in inquiry ideals should be able to help researchers grapple with the ethical dilemmas they are likely to encounter by introducing them to important concepts, tools, principles, and methods that tin can exist useful in resolving these dilemmas. Scientists must deal with a number of different controversial topics, such equally homo embryonic stem cell research, cloning, genetic engineering science, and research involving animal or human subjects, which crave upstanding reflection and deliberation.

David B. Resnik, J.D., Ph.D.
Bioethicist

Tel 984-287-4208
resnikd@niehs.nih.gov

freedwhost1976.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis/index.cfm

Share this post