Lesson 6 – Research Ethics

Dinner Party Icebreaker

• AKA, “Be friends, dammit”

• 1st person – which 2 people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party?

• 2nd – 11th person – which one person, plus one of previously mentioned people, would you invite?3rd person – which 3, plus two previous?

Assistantships

• Any issues?

• Any exciting updates?

Homework

• Did anyone have serious trouble?

• Did anyone have questions?

Ethics

• What words/phrases come to mind?

Ethics

• Co-authorship/recognition

• Citations/Plagirism

• Relationships with Mentors

• Human Subjects

• What do you expect from your professor in terms of ethics and ethical guidance?

• What do you expect for co-authorship/recognition in your assistantships?

Federal offenses: research misconduct

Fabrication -- making up data or results and recording or reporting them.

Falsification -- manipulating research materials or research subjects, equipment, or processes, or changing, or omitting data or results,

such that the research is not accurately represented in the

research record.

Plagiarism -- appropriating and using as one’s own the

documented ideas, processes, results, or words of another

without giving appropriate credit

FEDERAL POLICY ON RESEARCH MISCONDUCT http://www.ostp.gov/html/001207_3.html

How common?Graduate students:

Business 56%

Engineering 54%

Physical sciences 50%

Medical and health-care 49%

Law 45%

Social science and humanities 39%

- Donald McCabe, Center for Academic Integrity, Duke U.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2006-09-21T120800Z_01_N20379527_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-CHEATING.xml&src=rss

“One case can cost a million dollars.”

Matt Ronning, Director

Sponsored Programs

“Less than 1% reported?”

Paul Cousins, Director Office of Student Conduct

IRB

• http://www.research.fsu.edu/humansubjects/

• The ethical principles are:

• Respect for persons - which includes the requirement of a voluntary informed consent process

• Beneficence – which entails an obligation to protect persons from harm by minimizing risks and maximizing benefits

• Justice – which requires that selection of subjects be fair and equitable and that particular care be taken when working with populations (i.e. children, decisionally impaired) whose status puts them in a vulnerable position.

Some examples of human subjects research:• Interviewing cancer survivors about coping techniques

• Questionnaires about dating behaviors among college students

• Surveys about shopping preferences in rural communities

• Moderate exercise activities and venipuncture of individuals to determine certain depletions

• Music therapy intervention to determine whether it affects pain levels in a hospital environment.

• Human subjects research does not include, as examples:

• Surveys for evaluating the performance of faculty, staff, and students, or other studies for internal institutional use only (not a "research" activity)

• Oral history of New Orleans jazz artists and memories of post-WWII era (information is not gathered for "generalizable knowledge").

• Secondary analysis of publically availably data, such as reviewing US Census data (not "human subjects" – de-identified data).

Assurance and Jurisdiction of the IRB• FSU’s assurance with the federal government specifies that all

research activities involving human subjects, and all other activities which even in part involve such research, regardless of funding source or sponsorship, must be reviewed by the IRB (Human Subjects Committee) if one or more of the following apply:

• the research is sponsored by FSU

• the research is conducted by or under the direction of any employee, faculty, staff, student, or agent of FSU in connection with his or her institutional responsibilities

• the research is conducted by or under the direction of any employee, faculty, staff or agent of FSU using any property or facility of this institution

• the research involves the use of FSU’s non-public information to identify or contact human research subjects or prospective subjects.

Citations – Do you need one?

• Your professor told you about the work of another scholar, which you include in your paper. Do you cite the scholar? What about the professor?

• You speak to a friend who tells you about a book source. You cite the book. Do you cite the friend?

• You quote a fairytale that your mother told you as a child, which you haven’t seen written down. Do you cite your mother? The fairytale?

• You use a lecture from your professor in another class. Do you cite the professor?

Game

Things to Do This Week

• Global Scholars Applications Due Thursday

Assignment

• Meet with one other student and compare abstracts. Revise them to turn them in again next lesson.

• Take the IRB quiz. Send us your results. Keep a file for your records.

• Your syllabus lied again, so write this down - no excuses.