Responding to allegations of scientific misconduct

Institutions in France are not yet well prepared to respond to allegations of scientific misconduct. Following a serious allegation in late 1997. INSERM,* the primary organization for medical and health-related research in France, began to reflect on this subject, aided by scientists and jurists. The conclusions have resulted in establishing a procedure to be followed in cases of alleged misconduct, and also in reinforcing the application of good laboratory practices within each laboratory. Guidelines for authorship practices and scientific assessment must also be considered. Even though each institution must remain responsible for responding to allegations of scientific misconduct within its doors, INSERM would like to see national, European, and international co-ordination about the methods of such response. Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (eng. French National Medical Research Institute) is known as INSERM. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium, Scientific Misconduct: An International Perspective, organised by The Medical University of Warsaw, 16 November, 1998.     

The role of scientific associations in promoting research integrity and deterring research misconduct

The nature of scientific societies’ relationships with their members limits their ability to promote research integrity. They must therefore leverage their strengths as professional organizations to integrate ethical considerations into their ongoing support of their academic disciplines. This paper suggests five strategies for doing so.     

Ethical issues in biomedical research: Perceptions and practices of postdoctoral research fellows responding to a survey

We surveyed 1005 postdoctoral fellows by questionnaire about ethical matters related to biomedical research and publishing; 33% responded. About 18% of respondents said they had taken a course in research ethics, and about 31% said they had had a course that devoted some time to research ethics. A substantial majority stated willingness to grant other investigators, except competitors, access to their data before publication and to share research materials. Respondents’ opinions about contributions justifying authorship of research papers were mainly consistent but at variance with those of many biomedical journal editors. More than half said they had observed what they considered unethical research practices. To increase the chances of getting a grant funded, 27% said they were willing to select or omit data to improve their results; to make publication of their work more likely or to benefit their career, 15% would select or omit data and 32% would list an undeserving author. Of respondents who thought they had been unfairly denied authorship on a paper, or been listed with or asked to list an undeserving author, 75% said they would be willing to list an undeserving author (P<0.001). Having taken a course dealing with research ethics had no effect on stated willingness to select or omit data or to fabricate data in the future, but was positively associated with willingness to grant undeserved authorship (P<0.04). Although these results do not controvert research demonstrating the effectiveness of ethics courses during professional education, they indicate that the research environment is a powerful component of a trainee’s experience and ethical development. Preliminary results of this work were presented in part as a poster at the forumEthics, Values, and the Promise of Science, presented by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, 25–26 February 1993 in San Francisco, California, USA.     

Sociology and psychology within the scope of scientific dishonesty

A survey is undertaken based on qualitative analyses of the cases of scientific misconduct from the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty’s first five years of collecting data, with additional information from selected international sources, in which underlying psychological motivations can be judged. An carlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium, Scientific Misconduct. An International Perspective, organised by The Medical University of Warsay, 16 November, 1998.     

Improving the Reporting of Health and Psychological Research

A growing body of empirical evidence has consistently demonstrated that much publically and privately funded research is reported in a way that makes it difficult for the findings to be included in evidence syntheses or used by researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and the public. Poorly reported studies thus represent a significant waste of scarce resources. Reporting guidelines are one strategy that has been increasingly used as a method to improve the completeness or usability of primary and secondary research across a broad range of disciplines including psychology. We present a synopsis of two studies investigating the impact of the Transparent Reporting of Evaluation with Nonrandomised Designs statement and factors that affect authors' and journal editors' use of it and other reporting guidelines. We also make recommendations for future guideline development or revisions based on our experiences, provide details of resources for psychologists, and make suggestions for future research and recommendations for improving the transparency of reporting of psychological research.     

Suppression of scientific research: Bahramdipity and Nulltiple scientific discoveries

The fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip can be taken to be allegorical of not only chance discovery (serendipity) but of other aspects of scientific discovery as well. Just as Horace Walpole coined serendipity, so can the term bahramdipity be derived from the tale and defined as the cruel suppression of a serendipitous discovery. Suppressed, unpublished discoveries are designated nulltiples. Several examples are presented to make the case that bahramdipity is an existent aspect of scientific discovery. Other examples of non-ideal scientific research and discovery are provided in order to contrast and clarify the meaning and use of bahramdipity. Additional allegories of scientific discovery are taken from the tale and a hope for the strengthening of scientific integrity is expressed.     

Machiavellianism and Theory of Mind in people affected by schizophrenia

CONTEXT: People affected by schizophrenia show deficits in social interaction (Cramer, Bowen, & O'Neill, 1992); such a deficit may stem from an alteration in the representation of mental states. OBJECT: In this study we have examined 42 people affected by schizophrenia, diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria, by testing them with an instrument (the Mach IV scale, Christie & Geis, 1970) assessing "Machiavellian Intelligence" according to Niccolò Machiavelli's assertions. Schizophrenic subjects were compared to a sample of normal controls, matched for age, sex, and education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to evaluate if there were correlations between the ability to understand other people's mental states and the capacity for interpreting "Machiavellian expressions." RESULTS: Results show that people affected by schizophrenia are less able to use Machiavellian-style "tactical" abilities than controls. CONCLUSION: Such a disability seems to be correlated to poor mentalising abilities.     

湖北省保健干部健康状况主要影响因素分析

临床见习对整个医院医学体系维持、运行和发挥功能起着很重要的作用,但在具体实践中与患者的隐私权发生冲突时,又该如何保护患者的隐私权?以案件为例进行伦理分析,并通过伦理论辩求证"尊重自主原则"是保护患者隐私权的主要原则。     

Defining Financial Conflicts and Managing Research Relationships: An Analysis of University Conflict of Interest Committee Decisions

Despite a decade of federal regulation and debate over the appropriateness of financial ties in research and their management, little is known about the actual decision-making processes of university conflict of interest (COI) committees. This paper analyzes in detail the discussions and decisions of three COI committees at three public universities in California. University committee members struggle to understand complex financial relationships and reconcile institutional, state, and federal policies and at the same time work to protect the integrity of the scientific process, the autonomy and intellectual freedom of their faculty colleagues and students, and the financial interests of the university.     

The use of Skype in analysis and training: a research and literature review

Of recent years there has not only been an increasing use of Skype in analytic treatment, supervision and teaching, but also a number of writers have been endeavouring to assess its effectiveness. Whilst it is generally agreed that Skype can facilitate an analytic encounter where distance prohibits a face‐to‐face process, where continuity needs to be maintained and where analysands are in areas far from specialized centres, there is divergence in the literature as to whether analysis, as opposed to psychotherapy, can be successful using Skype. This paper reviews the literature and concludes that the essentials of a genuine analytic process are not necessarily precluded by Skype. One central reason is because there exists a cross‐modal communication channel between the human senses (underpinned by audiovisual mirror neurons) in addition to the recently discovered instinct for communication and interpersonal understanding, and these can override the need for physical proximity of the participants. The essentials of an analytic frame can thus be maintained, and the continuity that Skype enables means that containment is also facilitated and this counters the negative aspects of shuttle analysis. The critical issues for the profession then become the professional development for practitioners in the use of Skype and suggestions are listed.     

Differential use of partial information by good and poor readers

Two interpretations of the poor readers' deficit are examined. According to one interpretation, poor readers are primarily deficient in use of phonetic information, and, thus, their deficit is specific to reading or at least to use of language. A second interpretation is that good and poor readers differ in their ability or tendency to use stimulus attributes—that is, partial information for stimulus identity—and, thus, their deficit is not specific to reading. Three experiments provide evidence favoring the second interpretation. Good and poor readers perform differently in tests of memory—whether or not the stimulus items are coded phonetically—when information about stimulus identity is incomplete due to memory loss and the response measure is sensitive to partial-information use in guessing. Likewise, the two groups perform differently in a perceptual task when information for stimulus identity is partial, but they perform at similar levels when information is complete.     

Expectancy,integration, and interactional processes: Age differences in the nature of words affected by sentence context

Two experiments investigated sentence context effects on the naming times of sentence completion words by third-grade children and college students. Across both experiments, the largest age difference in contextual facilitation was obtained for highly predictable, best completion words. Pronounced age differences in facilitation effects were also present for semantically acceptable target words which were much less predictable in the sentence context than the best completion words. However, age differences in contextual facilitation were negligible for target words which were associatively related to the best completion word, but which were not also semantically acceptable in the sentence context. Thus, the semantic acceptability of the word in the sentence context had a much greater influence on children's as compared to adults' word identification times, both when the word was highly predictable, as well as when it was much less predictable in the sentence context.     

Visual search by children: the effect of background variation and the use of visual cues

A visual search task was used to assess developmental changes in children's selective attention to specified portions of a visual display. Seven-, nine-, and twelve-year-olds searched for a target letter in matrices of letters, each of which was centered in a form. On each matrix the forms were uniform or they varied in color, shape or both color and shape. The children searched with either no cues or with color or shape cues that could be used to restrict and speed their search. In all conditions search speed increased with age. Comparisons among conditions revealed three different age trends. With no cues children of all ages were slowed comparably by variation in background forms. With color cues all children increased their search speeds relative to no-cue speeds, suggesting selective fixation, but the 12-year-olds benefited most from the cues. With shape cues the search speed of 9- and 12-year-olds was slowed while that of 7-year-olds was either unchanged or was slowed only slightly. These different trends caution against overly general statements of changes with age in selective attention, and highlight the need to consider both particular task requirements and the processes used by subjects of different ages in tasks requiring selective attention.     

Fitting the off-diagonal dedicom model in the least-squares sense by a generalization of the harman and jones minres procedure of factor analysis

Harshman's DEDICOM model providesa framework for analyzing square but asymmetric materices of directional relationships amongn objects or persons in terms of a small number of components. One version of DEDICOM ignores the diagonal entries of the matrices. A straight-forward computational solution for this model is offered in the present paper. The solution can be interpreted as a generalized Minres procedure suitable for handing asymmetric matrices.     

The challenge of raising ethical awareness: A case-based aiding system for use by computing and ICT students

Students, the future Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals, are often perceived to have little understanding of the ethical issues associated with the use of ICTs. There is a growing recognition that the moral issues associated with the use of the new technologies should be brought to the attention of students. Furthermore, they should be encouraged to explore and think more deeply about the social and legal consequences of the use of ICTs. This paper describes the development of a tool designed to raise students’ awareness of the social impact of ICTs. The tool offers guidance to students undertaking computing and computer-related courses when considering the social, legal and professional implications of the actions of participants in situations of ethical conflict. However, unlike previous work in this field, this tool is not based on an artificial intelligence paradigm. Aspects of the theoretical basis for the design of the tool and the tool’s practical development are discussed. Preliminary results from the testing of the tool are also discussed. An earlier version of this paper was presented by one of the authors at the First International Conference on Teaching Applied and Professional Ethics in Higher Education, Federal University of Surrey Centre for Applied Ethics, Southlands College, Roehampton, London, 2–4 September, 2003.     

Children's Production of Unfamiliar Word Sequences Is Predicted by Positional Variability and Latent Classes in a Large Sample of Child-Directed Speech

We explore whether children's willingness to produce unfamiliar sequences of words reflects their experience with similar lexical patterns. We asked children to repeat unfamiliar sequences that were identical to familiar phrases (e.g., A piece of toast) but for one word (e.g., a novel instantiation of A piece of X, like A piece of brick). We explore two predictions-motivated by findings in the statistical learning literature-that children are likely to have detected an opportunity to substitute alternative words into the final position of a four-word sequence if (a) it is difficult to predict the fourth word given the first three words and (b) the words observed in the final position are distributionally similar. Twenty-eight 2-year-olds and thirty-one 3-year-olds were significantly more likely to correctly repeat unfamiliar variants of patterns for which these properties held. The results illustrate how children's developing language is shaped by linguistic experience.