The Embassy of Good Science - User contributions [en]

Theme:906ca500-7103-40c8-86a8-824da4c80789

2021-10-27T15:32:35Z

0000-0002-1016-1145:

{{Theme
|Theme Type=Misconduct & Misbehaviors
|Has Parent Theme=Theme:85c71a25-b26a-4631-9620-05a9a84e3fd3
|Title=Take no full responsibility for the integrity of the research project and its reports
|Is About=According to the European Code of Conduct in Research Integrity, “all partners in research collaborations take responsibility for the integrity of the research.” 1 It is thus expected that all involved parties are aware of, and agree on the principles of research integrity, what constitutes misconduct and how potential misconduct will be handled. In addition, all authors of a publication are assumed to be answerable for the entire content of the publication, unless specified otherwise.
|Important Because=In practice, although each member is wholly responsible for the integrity of their contribution, it could be difficult for an individual or a team to ensure the integrity of the whole project. This is especially true in collaborative projects involving several disciplines, institutions or cross-border initiatives. In the case of authorship, for instance, it can be ethically complex to attribute accountability in large, multidisciplinary projects. 2 In such situations, transparency as to the role of each contributing member or team becomes crucial. Practices such as assigning Contributor Role Ontologies and Taxonomies (CROTs) are a way of recognizing and clarifying the roles of contributors. 3
|Important For=Researchers; Research institutions; Administrators; Collaborating researchers; Research Integrity Officers
|Has Best Practice=The ECoC states that all partners involved in research take full responsibility for the overall integrity of the project. All partners are also expected to have agreed at the outset on the standards of research integrity that will be maintained. 1 This can include all aspects of the research, from conception to publication, in order to prevent ambiguity at a later stage. The Montreal Statement on Research Integrity in Cross-Boundary Research Collaborations 4 states that all involved partners openly discuss their customary practices and expectations, including those of research integrity. While every individual is responsible fully for their own contribution, there should also be a collective responsibility for the integrity of the project. 4
|Has Detail=References:

1. The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Accessed October 11, 2021. www.allea.org

2. TP C. Authorship matrix: a rational approach to quantify individual contributions and responsibilities in multi-author scientific articles. ''Sci Eng Ethics''. 2014;20(2):345-361. doi:10.1007/S11948-013-9454-3

3. Vasilevsky NA, Hosseini M, Teplitzky S, et al. Is authorship sufficient for today’s collaborative research? A call for contributor roles. ''<nowiki>https://doi.org/101080/0898962120201779591</nowiki>''. 2020;28(1):23-43. doi:10.1080/08989621.2020.1779591

4. 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity. Montreal Statement on Research Integrity in Cross-Boundary Research Collaborations. 2013;(May):2013. <nowiki>http://www.researchintegrity.org/Statements/Montreal</nowiki> Statement English.pdf
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|Related To Theme=Theme:72c8ab8d-bbf8-4503-8b48-9de7eac37673
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{{Tags
|Has Virtue And Value=Transparency; Responsibility; Respect
|Has Good Practice And Misconduct=planning; Communication
}}

Theme:8d34c040-9be7-4918-bc54-1fb85f0becad

2021-10-27T15:31:19Z

0000-0002-1016-1145:

{{Theme
|Theme Type=Misconduct & Misbehaviors
|Has Parent Theme=Theme:85c71a25-b26a-4631-9620-05a9a84e3fd3
|Title=Be grossly unfair to your collaborators
|Is About=Successful and fruitful collaborations are one of the desired outcomes of research. Different partners can contribute to various aspects of the research project based on their expertise, which improves the strength and quality of findings. Successful collaborations also strengthen trust between the involved partners, which is essential for the advancement of knowledge. 1
|Important Because=Research collaborations can occur between different partners, such as different departments within the same institution, different institutions, teams from academia and industry and teams from different countries. At the outset of the partnership, there may be varying expectations of how the responsibilities and benefits of the research will be distributed. This is especially relevant in the case of academic-industrial partnerships. 2 Multicentre research based on collaborations between the Global North and South may also pose special challenges, because of the differences between the infrastructure, resources and negotiating power between the partners. 3 Not addressing the concerns of each partner could lead to misunderstandings and disagreements during later stages of the research.

Based on the principles of fairness and distributive justice, all collaborators should ensure that benefits and burdens are distributed proportionately. The benefits of the research may take various forms such access to a deliverable product, career advancement of researchers, authorships and acknowledgements, local capacity building and others. These should be anticipated beforehand, and a consensus reached on how each partner can share in the outcomes. Similarly, the burdens and risks involved, such as personal risks to participants and field researchers, institutional investments in research and risks associated with providing and exporting data should be distributed as fairly as possible, in order to avoid the exploitation of one or more partners. Not doing so, or deviating from initial agreements on benefit sharing, constitutes a questionable research practice.
|Important For=Research institutions; Collaborating researchers; All stakeholders in research
|Has Best Practice=Concern for research collaborators and those involved in research forms an important tenet of the ECoC. 4 In the spirit of respect and collegiality, it is essential that decisions regarding benefits and burdens be made after sufficient deliberation with the different teams.

According to the ECoC, all involved partners should agree in advance on important aspects of the research, such as the goals and outcomes. 4 The attribution of credits (such as authorships) also form important benefits, and should be decided in consultation with all collaborators. The Montreal Statement on Research Integrity in Cross-Boundary Research Collaborations 5 states that all involved partners should reach an agreement at the outset, and later as needed, as to how the outcomes of the research, research data and authorship and publication responsibilities will be handled. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) also offers best practice guidelines on how to handle authorship disputes, should they arise. 6
|Has Detail=References:

1. Integrity in research collaborations: The Montreal Statement. ''Lancet''. 2013;382(9901):1310. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62126-1

2. S G, B N, K D. Differing Perceptions Concerning Research Integrity Between Universities and Industry: A Qualitative Study. ''Sci Eng Ethics''. 2018;24(5):1421-1436. doi:10.1007/S11948-017-9965-4

3. RM R, A T, M DC, et al. Challenges of non-commercial multicentre North-South collaborative clinical trials. ''Trop Med Int Health''. 2013;18(2):237-241. doi:10.1111/TMI.12036

4. The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Accessed October 11, 2021. www.allea.org

5. 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity. Montreal Statement on Research Integrity in Cross-Boundary Research Collaborations. 2013;(May):2013. <nowiki>http://www.researchintegrity.org/Statements/Montreal</nowiki> Statement English.pdf

6. Albert T, Wager E. How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers. Published online September 1, 2009. doi:10.24318/COPE.2018.1.1
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|Related To Resource=Resource:63530b4d-df94-4dde-8235-2c0fa9c63b9d;Resource:A4ae8a3f-80d6-4d4a-a9fb-67426abeb6b6
|Related To Theme=Theme:72c8ab8d-bbf8-4503-8b48-9de7eac37673
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{{Tags
|Has Virtue And Value=Transparency; Resepct; justice; Fairness
|Has Good Practice And Misconduct=Communication; Collaborative research; Balancing harms and benefits
}}

Theme:7bef694c-a3df-40ae-8cfb-97b894a5f90e

2021-10-27T15:30:21Z

0000-0002-1016-1145:

{{Theme
|Theme Type=Misconduct & Misbehaviors
|Has Parent Theme=Theme:48185295-9e1e-41fb-ab70-948596e588d5
|Title=Communicate results to the general public before a peer reviewed publication is available
|Is About=Peer reviews have become a crucial step in the academic dissemination of information. Not only does it serve as a means of quality control, it also legitimizes research through a process of verification and validation. Meant to provide constructive feedback to the authors, the process of peer review involves a thorough evaluation of the research methodology and findings by experts or colleagues in the field (“peers”).

The main strength of the peer reviews lie in the fact that they are capable of preventing the dissemination of flawed or manipulated information. Thus, publication in a peer-reviewed journals has become a pre-requisite for scientific credibility. However, it is not without drawbacks: not only is the review process is subject to biases and errors, but it could also potentially be misused by editors and reviewers to exclude novel information that refutes current standards. 1 Further, peer-reviews are also time-consuming, with the average time for accepted papers being 17 weeks. 2 In the case of research that is life-saving and of immediate impact, such delays could prove harmful. To circumvent this problem, many journals allow the publication of “pre-prints”, which are non-reviewed manuscripts which are disseminated online, hosted mostly on “pre-print servers” such as MedArxiv, arXiv and bioRxiv. 3 Pre-prints can be peer-reviewed and published formally at a later stage. Besides saving time, disseminating research in this manner also encourages feedback from a broader audience, improves the visibility of early stage researchers and help in manuscript revision prior to publication. 4
|Important Because=Although the use of pre-print servers has been rising over the past decade, the COVID-19 pandemic has witnessed an unprecedented surge in the number of pre-prints. Fraser et al.5 found that 25% or all articles on COVID-19 in the first 10 months of the pandemic (more than 30,000 manuscripts) were first posted as pre-prints. Besides attracting the attention of the scientific community, these manuscripts have also received substantial coverage in social media, news outlets and from the general public. 6 They have also played a crucial role in shaping the standard of care for COVID-19. In case of the RECOVERY trial, which studied the use of the steroid drug dexamethasone in critically ill COVID patients, the pre-publication of the benefits of the drug led to its prompt incorporation into treatment guidelines, and possibly benefited many gravely ill patients. 7,8

On the other hand, disseminating information prior to peer review has also had negative consequences during the pandemic. A study that reported beneficial effects of a combination therapy of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was published in May 2020 on MedRxiv. 9 It was later withdrawn due to its questionable methodology, but not before it was widely publicized as being a “game-changer in the history of medicine” by a prominent political figure, leading to huge demands, severe shortages and indiscriminate use of these drugs. 10 Another paper that received widespread attention prior to its retraction reported an “uncanny similarity” between the protein structures or the COVID-19 virus and HIV, and concluded that this similarity was “unlikely to be fortuitous”, leading many to speculate that the pandemic was the result of a bioengineered weaponized virus. 11,12 Although the above examples are clear-cut and have been cited often, it is very likely that less evident instances of the misuse of non-peer reviewed information exist, making it a difficult challenge to address.
|Important For=Researchers; Research institutions; Authors; General public
|Has Best Practice=Although it is evident that non-peer-reviewed information has its pros and cons, it is not evident what the obligations of researchers are with regard to the dissemination of their research. The European Code of Conduct in Research Integrity, for instance, states that authors should be “…. honest in their communication to the general public and in traditional and social media.” 13 Thus, it does not explicitly forbid the pre-publication dissemination of results. In a public health emergency such as the ongoing pandemic, the situation is even more complex. The WHO Working Group on Ethics and COVID-19 states that “researchers generating information that has the potential to aid response efforts have an ethical obligation to share that information as soon as it is quality-controlled for release (e.g., peer-reviewed),” and that they should “…share this information without waiting for publication in scientific journals.” 14 These statements seem confusing, as it is unclear whether authors should wait until the manuscript is peer reviewed (which could be a long period) or circumvent this step. Here, the benefits of timely communication should be balanced against the potential risk of spreading inaccurate information, which can have lasting consequences.

When unreviewed information is communicated, however, it should be clearly labelled as such. In line with the principles of honesty, accuracy and transparency recommended by the ECCRI, neither the findings nor the relevance of the research should be exaggerated or misrepresented.
|Has Detail=References:

1. Kreiman J. On peer review. ''J Speech, Lang Hear Res''. 2016;59(3):480-483. doi:10.1044/2016_JSLHR-S-16-0043

2. Huisman J, Smits J. Duration and quality of the peer review process: the author’s perspective. ''Sci 2017 1131''. 2017;113(1):633-650. doi:10.1007/S11192-017-2310-5

3. Ravinetto R, Caillet C, Zaman MH, et al. Preprints in times of COVID19: the time is ripe for agreeing on terminology and good practices. ''BMC Med Ethics 2021 221''. 2021;22(1):1-5. doi:10.1186/S12910-021-00667-7

4. Sarabipour S, Debat HJ, Emmott E, Burgess SJ, Schwessinger B, Hensel Z. On the value of preprints: An early career researcher perspective. ''PLoS Biol''. 2019;17(2). doi:10.1371/JOURNAL.PBIO.3000151

5. Fraser N, Brierley L, Dey G, et al. The evolving role of preprints in the dissemination of COVID-19 research and their impact on the science communication landscape. ''PLOS Biol''. 2021;19(4):e3000959. doi:10.1371/JOURNAL.PBIO.3000959

6. Reddick R. Preprints: how draft academic papers have become essential in the fight against COVID. Published 2021. Accessed October 11, 2021. <nowiki>https://theconversation.com/preprints-how-draft-academic-papers-have-become-essential-in-the-fight-against-covid-158811</nowiki>

7. Ledford H. Coronavirus breakthrough: dexamethasone is first drug shown to save lives. Accessed October 11, 2021. <nowiki>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01824-5#ref-CR1</nowiki>

8. Horby P, Lim WS, Emberson J, et al. Effect of Dexamethasone in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 – Preliminary Report. ''medRxiv''. Published online June 22, 2020:2020.06.22.20137273. doi:10.1101/2020.06.22.20137273

9. Davido B, Lansaman T, Bessis S, et al. Hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin: a potential interest in reducing in-hospital morbidity due to COVID-19 pneumonia (HI-ZY-COVID)? ''medRxiv''. Published online May 11, 2020:2020.05.05.20088757. doi:10.1101/2020.05.05.20088757

10. Piller C. ‘This is insane!’ Many scientists lament Trump’s embrace of risky malaria drugs for coronavirus. ''Science (80- )''. Published online March 26, 2020. doi:10.1126/SCIENCE.ABB9021

11. Pradhan P, Pandey AK, Mishra A, et al. Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag. ''bioRxiv''. Published online January 31, 2020:2020.01.30.927871. doi:10.1101/2020.01.30.927871

12. Between fast science and fake news: Preprint servers are political: Impact of Social Sciences. Accessed October 11, 2021. <nowiki>https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/04/03/between-fast-science-and-fake-news-preprint-servers-are-political/</nowiki>

13. The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Accessed October 11, 2021. www.allea.org

14. Organization WH. ''Ethical Standards for Research during Public Health Emergencies: Distilling Existing Guidance to Support COVID-19 R&D''. World Health Organization; 2020.
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{{Related To
|Related To Resource=Resource:F825e89a-2cab-4ee1-ac16-ef37dd6fdb01
|Related To Theme=Theme:29d64b53-eba2-489b-937d-440d6cd118d8
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{{Tags
|Has Virtue And Value=Transparency; rigour; Accountability
|Has Good Practice And Misconduct=Public Communication
}}

Resource:E3ad5a30-e49c-44b2-94b4-67801cc1f6d3

2020-08-13T15:41:22Z

0000-0002-1016-1145:

{{Resource
|Resource Type=Cases
|Title=Forbidden Knowledge
|Is About=This fictional case is about sharing knowledge concerning a specific group of Indians in the Southwest of the United States. The central questions is this case are the following: ''Do the wishes of my consultants override the need of science for an ethnographic description of a little-known culture that is becoming westernized? Would it be ethical to produce a work that would appear only after all of my consultants are dead, which could be 20 or 30 years? Or does the right to privacy, which my consultants insisted on, have to be observed as long as the people maintain their independent existence?''
|Important Because=This is important because it can make the difference in sharing important knowledge or not.
|Important For=Researchers; Research subjects
}}
{{Link
|Has Link=https://www.americananthro.org/LearnAndTeach/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=12942&RDtoken=58603&userID=5089&navItemNumber=731
}}
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|Related To Theme=Theme:A1a1b736-7002-405c-8375-711a11f20e04;Theme:540c9ba0-bc9c-4311-b3e1-7a650d2b9f0f
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{{Tags
|Has Location=USA; United States
|Has Virtue And Value=Honesty; Respect
|Has Good Practice And Misconduct=Non-publication; Data reporting
|Related To Research Area=Other humanities
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Resource:A6bae807-a521-46c4-a7ba-79c1fe163421

2020-08-13T15:27:39Z

0000-0002-1016-1145:

{{Resource
|Resource Type=Cases
|Title=Getting a Fair Shake?
|Is About=This fictional case is about an Associate Professor. She submitted a proposal which received a score too low to be funded. She is wondering what she should do now, because she is certain that her method will work.
|Important Because=The current peer review system may not work positive for everybody. It is important how to react when your proposal as a researcher is rejected for funding without deception.
|Important For=Researchers; Funders; Peer reviewers
}}
{{Link
|Has Link=https://ori.hhs.gov/content/case-two-getting-fair-shake
}}
{{Related To
|Related To Theme=Theme:29d64b53-eba2-489b-937d-440d6cd118d8
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{{Tags
|Has Virtue And Value=Reliability; Honesty
|Has Good Practice And Misconduct=Communication; Research methods
}}

User:0000-0002-1016-1145

2020-08-13T15:23:21Z

0000-0002-1016-1145: create user page