HSC – 422 ENGINEERING ETHICS

LECTURE 10

RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH
CONDUCT

ENGR. HUMA TABASSUM

LECTURER
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER & SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
• Engineering research and research collaborations involving engineers, like
other cooperative endeavors, require trust to flourish
• The need for trustworthy professionals in modern society is not captured in
the frequent suggestion that trust is necessary because the trusting party
cannot control or monitor the trusted party’s performance
• There are two elements to responsible or trustworthy behavior in
professionals: competence and concern
• A modern society devotes resources to the education of its citizens
• Those resources enable members of various professions to master bodies of professional
knowledge and use their educated discretion to make good decisions in the area of their
expertise
• There are no good alternatives to having trustworthy professionals, because
both individuals and society must rely on the judgment and the discretion of
the professional
• Oversight by supervisors and collaborators should serve two important ends:
• It should lessen self-deception among investigators, self-deception that may lead them into
desperate situations in which they will be tempted to cheat
• It should foster a full understanding and appreciation of the values that contribute to good
science and how those are best implemented in specific research contexts
• Research misconduct is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in
proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results
• Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them
• Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or
omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research
record
• Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words
without giving appropriate credit
• A finding of research misconduct requires that: there be a significant departure
from accepted practices of the relevant research community the misconduct be
committed intentionally, or knowingly, or recklessly the allegation be proven by a
preponderance of evidence
• The subject of research misconduct is not entirely new among researchers
• As far back as 1830, the English mathematician Charles Babbage wrote an influential book on
dishonesty in research
• In his book, Babbage defined several terms to describe research misconduct, including one that is still
very much in use: “cooking the data”
• To cook the data is to select only those data that fit one’s hypothesis and to discard those that do not
• Using data solely because they support one’s hypothesis would now count as falsification of data,
which is a type of research misconduct
• Research ethics came to broad public attention only after some flagrant cases of
research misconduct (and the institutional mishandling of those cases) came to light
• The focus on “research misconduct” runs the danger of making it seem that research
ethics is merely an attempt to hold the line against deliberate deception, rather than a
concern to develop, maintain, and transmit standards of research integrity in a context
of increasing complexity in research practice
• The alternative approach is to focus on the responsibility for “research integrity”
• Research integrity has several major components: ensuring the integrity of research results, and
dealing fairly with others, especially by appropriately acknowledging their research contributions
RESEARCH MISCONDUCT DISTINGUISHED
FROM MISTAKES AND ERRORS
• Research misconduct is not applied to all types of wrongdoing done in a research
setting, but only certain actions that seriously threaten research integrity
• Not all failure to follow standards of good research practice counts as research
misconduct, even if some failure jeopardizes the research results
• “Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion.”
• The ethical responsibilities of investigators do not include a responsibility to undertake
work only within the investigators’ competence, although that requirement does
receive strong emphasis in codes of engineering practice
• The difference in responsibilities is explained by the practice of reviewing research
reports before publication by reviewers who are selected to be able to judge the
worth of the research reported
• In contrast, the practice of engineers, like the practice of physicians, is not reviewed
with the same regularity, so engineers in practice, like physicians, are charged with
protecting others against their own incompetence
• In the 1980s, the term “fraud” was widely used to describe research misconduct
• Is Research Misconduct Fraud?
DISTINGUISHING FALSIFICATION FROM
LEGITIMATE “DATA SELECTION”
• Data selection is the differential treatment of data
• When made according to legitimate criteria, data selection is an indispensable part of
science
• It is legitimate to discard some data if that “run” or sample is contaminated – for
example, because you dropped the sample on the floor – or if statistical methods that
are applicable to the sort of data you have collected warrant discarding some “outliers”
• To ensure the legitimacy of the criteria used for selection, those criteria should be
explicitly stated
• Changing one’s data merely to fit one’s expectations or preferences is
falsification
• Changing the value of data is absolutely prohibited, so no question arises of when it is
justified to do it
• However, excluding some data points or smoothing the curve plotted from the data
may be either justified data selection or unjustified “cooking”
• The crucial justification will depend on the characteristics of the data, such as how noisy
the data are
FABRICATION
• Fabrication of plausible findings in which one firmly believes, hinders
the progress of scientific research
• It is a reckless act, rather than an intentionally deceptive one
• Recklessness in research is similar to recklessness in other contexts,
such as driving too fast
• Recklessness is apparent in taking serious risks that, ethically
speaking, one ought not to take
• It shows a disregard of major values and standards and is, therefore,
irresponsible
• Recklessness is not only at the heart of much research misconduct but
2,

“reckless research” also causes deviation from responsible research conduct

• Ethically objectionable research practices
FACTORS THAT DAMAGE RESEARCH
INTEGRITY
• Threat of the loss of careers
• Shortage of jobs for, say, PhDs
• Pressure of research managers to conform to their theory
• Prospect of major financial gain for investigators

• None of these explanations ethically justifies research misconduct or

the more general irresponsible research conduct
• But identification of factors that foster it may help the research community
and individual investigators recognize temptations to cheat and take action to
remove or resist those temptations
RESPONSIBLE AUTHORSHIP, REVIEWING AND
EDITING
• Obligations of authors
• Refrain from plagiarizing
• Present an accurate account of their research
• Use journal space wisely
• Reveal any hazards in the conduct of their experiments
• Identify all sources of information contained in their research report
that are not common knowledge, and refrain from revealing any
information obtained from confidential sources
• Reveal any financial or other conflicts of interest
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN AUTHORING,
EDITING, OR REVIEWING RESEARCH
• We have seen that a party has a conflict of interest or is in a conflict of
interest position when that party
• Is in a position of trust that requires the exercise of judgment on behalf of others
(people, institutions, etc.)
• Has interests, obligations, or responsibilities of the sort that might interfere with the
exercise of such judgment, and
• Having those interests is neither obvious nor usual for others in the same position of
trust
• Financial conflicts of interest are common in academic life
• Arise in authoring research when an investigator has financial interests (such as stock
or company ownership, consulting relationships) that may be affected by publishing
the results of some research
• Many journals require that authors who have interests that might compete
with their obligation to present a clear objective account disclose those
interests when they publish their research
• Another sort of conflict of interest exists in publication, that is, for journal
editors and reviewers
• Their own research or career interests may be affected by publication of research by
other parties with whom they are in competition for research funds, talented graduate
students
• Conflicts of interest in reviewing are more likely to be experienced or
observed by engineering trainees than are financial conflicts of interest
• Editors need to select reviewers who know something about the research
area being reported, so appropriate reviewers may have some conflict of
interest
• Reviewers who receive a manuscript authored by an investigator who is
their competitor should do their best to fairly review the competitor’s work
HUMAN RESEARCH SUBJECTS/PARTICIPANTS
• Research with human subjects/participants is less common in some
engineering disciplines than in psychology and biomedicine, but it occurs
often in some newer engineering fields, such as biomedical engineering
and in studies of human factors
• To meet the “informed consent standard” for experimenting on human
beings requires that a person who is to become a subject/ participant in an
experiment must first be given full information about the experiment, and
freely consent to participate (i.e., agree to participate without being in any
way coerced)
• Until recently when research experiments were conducted on people, they
were referred to as “subjects” or “research subjects”
• In response to the objection that this made the people sound like mere material for
the investigators to use and failed to recognize that in the typical case, the people
had given their informed consent and decided to participate in the research, some
propose calling these “participants”
• A set of experiments dating from World War II included a series of radiation
experiments funded by the Department of Energy (DoE)
• The motivation for some of these studies was to learn more about radiation
injuries for the sake of workers who had been exposed to radiation in weapons
work during World War II
• Some experiments did meet today’s standards for the treatment of human
subjects
• In others, the patients were unharmed but their informed consent was never
obtained
• Still others were extremely damaging to subjects, with subjected patients
supposedly dying of cancer to massive doses of radiation
• Before the adoption of the informed consent standard, the informal rule for
ethical experimentation was for investigators to first do to themselves anything to
which they proposed to subject others – an inverted golden rule
• The radiation experiments were typical of experiments in earlier decades, in that
patients and prisoners were usually used in experiments that were unethical even
by that earlier standard
• The Common Rule for the Protection of Human Subjects/Participants in
Research defines minimal risk (to a participant in research) as “the
probability and magnitude of harm or discomfort [to the research
participant] anticipated in the research are not greater than those
ordinarily encountered in daily life or during the performance of routine
physical or psychological examinations or tests
• Research that involves the use of children, prisoners, people with reduced
mental capacity, people with some mental illness, or people with less
education, as research participants should be thoroughly regulated
• In addition to the informed consent of the child’s parents or guardian, the
child’s assent is required for research, if the child is capable of giving it
• Although the child may be too young to appreciate all the information that the
parents or guardian may have weighed in giving “informed consent,” the child may
be able to assent
• Assent roughly means that the child expresses the willingness to participate
RAISING ETHICAL CONCERNS IN RESEARCH
• Much attention has been given to creating safe and reliable ways of raising
concerns about possible research misconduct
• The best ways of raising concerns about other departures from responsible
research conduct will vary more with the specific research context
• Alerting a person who has committed research misconduct (especially
falsification or fabrication) has often led that person to destroy records in
an attempt to cover the misconduct
• One is advised to contact a staff member of the research standards office
or you might seek out a very senior member of the faculty whom you
respect and trust
• If the evidence you present is sufficient, then the inquiry and investigation
can proceed without your further involvement
RESPONSIBLE AUTHORSHIP AND CREDIT IN
ENGINEERING AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
• Credit for research contributions is assigned in three principal ways in
research publications:
• By authorship (of the research being published),
• Citation (of previously published or formally presented work), and
• Via a written acknowledgment (of some contribution to the present research)
• Citation and Acknowledgement
• Widely accepted criteria for citation of research publications include
• When you draw on any results or ideas that appeared in previously published or formally
presented work
• The Bibliography should be sufficient, include foundational work, and indicate where your
report fits in development of engineering and scientific research
• Theses in university libraries are appropriate for citation, as are some unpublished reports
• Unpublished work, such as private correspondence, is cited only when no readily obtainable
written sources are available
• Some engineering society publication guidelines obligate to obtain permission for
acknowledgements
• Citation of a person’s publication does not make the person cited accountable
for the works in which his/her work is cited
• So citation never requires permission of the part(ies) whose works are cited
• Professional societies have offered some guidance on citation practices
• Contributions to the reported research that are neither sufficiently significant
to qualify a person to join the authors in writing up the research nor
contained in a citable source should be recognized in the acknowledgments
• Person whose research contribution is acknowledged in a report of the
research is accountable only for the specific contribution for which the person
is acknowledged, not the whole report
• The ethical guidelines of some engineering and scientific societies do require permission
(of the person acknowledged) for an acknowledgment in an article in their journals
• Authorship
• A person is eligible for authorship of a research report, when (at least) both of the
following conditions are met:
• The person has made a major contribution (in such areas as research design, theoretical
development, development of a prototype, analysis and interpretation of data) to the research
reported
• That person reviews and approves the final manuscript
• Usually an author also contributes to the writing or critical revision of the manuscript
as well
• Authorship makes one accountable for the work that one has authored or coauthored
• Because each author must take responsibility for the quality and integrity of at least
some aspects of the research report and thus answer for any deficiencies in that
aspect of the work, all must approve the final version before it appears to the public
• Author accountability is also the reason that the author list should include no
fictitious names
• For the same reason, “gift” or “ghost” or “honorary” authorship (the listing of
someone as an author who does not contribute to the research and hence does not
qualify for authorship, although he or she may have some other connection to the
research) is unacceptable
• Responsibilities of Authors
• An author’s central obligation is to present a concise and accurate account of
the research, work, or project completed, together with an objective
discussion of its significance
• Plagiarism
• It is generally understood to be the appropriation of another person’s ideas,
processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit
• Plagiarism is a type of “research misconduct”
• It can be of graphical representations (such as photographs, tables, or charts) as well as
text, and of electronic media as well as hard copy (such as books, journals, conference
proceedings) and multimedia presentations
• Plagiarism is also what most colleges and universities regard as the most
serious misappropriation of credit of which their students or faculty members
may be found guilty
• IEEE also calls five “levels” or “degrees” of plagiarism
• Uncredited Verbatim Copying of a Full Paper
• Uncredited Verbatim Copying of a Large Portion (greater than 20% and up to 50%) within
a Paper
• Uncredited Verbatim Copying of Individual Elements (Paragraph(s), Sentence(s),
Illustration(s), etc.)
• Uncredited Improper Paraphrasing of Pages or Paragraphs
• Credited Verbatim Copying of a Major Portion of a Paper without Clear Description
• Plagiarism to any extent is a violation of the standards of fair crediting
• The ethical consideration about the wrongness of plagiarism cannot be
reduced to legal considerations of copyright violations
• Fair Sharing of Credit among Coauthors
• As co-authorship becomes more common, it becomes more important that
collaborators have a discussion early in their collaboration as to how they will
handle authorship decisions
• Determination of the order of authors or of which coauthors fall into the
special categories discussed earlier requires judgment
• First author – This term is most frequently used to mean the lead author
• Last author – In some of the fields in which the order of the authors does
indicate contribution, the last author position simply means the author who
made the least important contribution
RESPONSIBILITY FOR RESEARCH QUALITY
• Although honest mistakes are not counted as research misconduct or
as any other type of ethical violation, there are definite sanctions for
doing poor research and writing poor reports
• Research supervisors have both a responsibility to uphold research
standards and help their trainees to meet them
• The criteria that supervisors legitimately use in deciding whether
their trainees should be single authors or coauthors are the same as
for peer authors, that is, the criteria for authorship discussed earlier
SUBSIDIARY OBLIGATIONS OF AUTHORS
• In addition to obligations and responsibilities, authors are generally
recognized to have other obligations to avoid overburdening others or
wasting their efforts
• Do Not Fragment Your Research Reports
• If You Republish Your Previously Published Work, Cite It
• Make Available Any Special Research Materials Used in Reported
Research
• Disclose Any Financial Conflicts of Interest
• Warn Subsequent Investigators of Any Hazards in Conducting the
Research You Report