Running head: RESEARCH ETHICS

Translational Research and Ethical Practice Communication Research Review Leah Register Queens University of Charlotte

Running head: RESEARCH ETHICS Ethics in research procedures, or are essential in order to produce reliable information.

Research is conducted to produce valuable information, which if tampered with, will be no good. Research should be conducted with as much efficiency as possible, which is why ethics are important. Ethics allow a standard base of rules for research procedures which if followed correctly, will produce consistent, reliable results. In many studies; however, researchers have not followed these ethics, such as one Roxanne Parrott discussed in the Journal of Applied Communication Research, in 2008. In her study she found that although initial translational research, conducted by health and medical scientists, are reliable, she found that there were and still is many inconsistencies between professional diagnoses and their communication policies to the public. In the beginning of her article, Roxanne states that medical translational research is conducted to benefit the lives of others, which was not the case a few years ago. Cancer research, being one of the studies she chose to mention, is a study which could improve human lives. Right away it sounds like theres an equivalency problem within the scientists conducting the research. Considering it was not many years ago in which this research was not necessarily conducted to benefit human lives, it may be that there are inconsistent motives among the scientists for conducting the research. It was noted from one of her sources that translational research has had barriers in the past by academic settings that reward departmental efforts overinterdisciplinary programs and a lack of resources to support translational research. Not having enough resources to support your research is considered an infringement on the ethics of data analysis and reporting. If the scientists conducting the study care more about the academic

Running head: RESEARCH ETHICS

rewards than working to improve other peoples lives, then translational research between the two may differ. Even if scientists are able to come up with accurate and consistent data, depending on their motives for the study, there may be an inconsistency in each of their diagnoses of the patient. Scientists with the same motives, who are on the same page, have a better chance producing more reliable information than those with alternative objectives. During one of the studies on tobacco and the health risks that tobacco producers face, Roxanne brought up a situation in which the long term diagnoses conflicted with job applications. According to Roxanne, the medical field greatly encourages people to check out their family history in order to be cautious and wary of potential diseases they may be prone to. She pointed out that where it is beneficial to knowing your family history for your own health reasons, most people believe knowing their family history may be harmful to filling out future job applications, if you were to find any genetic diseases or holdbacks. Here again, is an example of inconsistency within a program. If doctors conduct research to make human lives better, which is supposedly their goal as of the past few years, then encourages them to do something which they believe will end up hurting their future job applications, is a violation of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications ethical guidelines. One of the guidelines listed for the association states that AEJMC members protect research participants [and] treat all research participants with respect, fairness and integrity (pg.4). Although this research group may not take part in these exact guidelines, they are ethical no matter the organization. Withholding information from customers is not treating the participants/patients fairly, and is also a violation of concealment ethics.

Running head: RESEARCH ETHICS Also within this article, even though Roxanne never mentioned this, it almost seemed as if doctors today are unreliable when it comes to their ethics. Roxanne stated that their main

reason for translational research was to improve lives and welfare, but she did say that that is not always the case. As she said, sometimes the reason why doctors conduct their research is to make money. She used the example of sunscreen, saying that researchers would allow commercials to include information from their studies on skin cancer in order to maximize profits on sunscreen. Although this may not sound like a completely unethical decision, it questions doctors motives for their studies. Doctors are a highly reliable source in society; we depend on them to care about their patients, and to work hard to make/keep us well. If their ethics are questionable and they value profit over the health of others, then that can be considered deceitful. Throughout Roxannes article there are various situations of miscommunication between researchers, doctors and patients, and researchers and the public, which became the main source of where unethical decisions took place in this article. Inconsistency, deception, concealment, and equivalency all have to do with communication. Roxanne came to the conclusion that communication scientists need to reduce the organizational barrier between the research conducted and the people it affects. As she last stated in her article, It is, thus, valuable to include efforts to understand and support the role of communication science in translational research in our disciplines national and international organizations (pg. 6).

References:
Parrott, R. (2008). A Multiple Discourse Approach to Health Communication: Translational Research and Ethical Practice.Journal Of Applied Communication Research, 36(1), 1-7. doi:10.1080/00909880701799345