Introduction

http://http://vimeo.com/15153208

Department chairs say major ethical misconduct rarely occurs at UW

http://http://vimeo.com/15174278

Advice to avoid ethical issues

http://http://vimeo.com/15162933

On advising students away from “toxic” labs to avoid ethical dilemmas

A panel of three University of Wisconsin department chairs discussed the ethical challenges faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students face in their research Monday, a topic of heightened concern at many universities.

“Ethics isn’t something that you just get trained in and you’re done,” psychology department chair Patricia Devine said. “Ethics is something you live. It has to become part of your everyday experience.”

When designing and conducting experiments, researchers often feel the pressures of their environment, particularly the need to publish high profile papers, Devine said. These pressures can lead to academic dishonesty and tampering with data.

As the first in a series of Responsible Conduct of Research Seminars this year, Director of Research Policy James Wells began the talk with a discussion of a survey of 119 UW graduate programs conducted last spring.

The survey asked researchers and administrators about the “climate of integrity” within their research programs, Wells said. Specifically, respondees answered questions about misconduct they observed, Wells said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald.

Students and faculty generally gave the “climate of integrity” in their department a pretty high rating, Wells said.

Each program then received individual feedback and a rank among other programs based on their results. In addition, the departments were asked to identify problems within the program they felt needed improvement.

“We’re always interested in making sure each new generation of researchers […] are getting training in research ethics and responsible conduct of research,” Wells said.

UW’s offices of Research Policy and Professional Development and Engagement collaborated with Michigan State University and Pennsylvania State University on the survey.

The partnership represented part of a nationwide initiative, the Project for Scholarly Integrity, and was funded by the Council of Graduate Schools, Wells said.

When dealing with ethical issues within graduate programs, a safe person or place for students to voice their concerns is important in dealing with difficult situations, Devine said.

Panelists agreed graduate students need guidance from faculty members and advisers but also need to develop their own ideas of scientific research.

“You can do as I do and as I say, but you need to develop your own style on how you want to do your own work within the context of your discipline,” engineering physics department chair Michael Corradini said.

According to a review by Danielle Finelli at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, 1.97 percent of researchers admitted to fabricating, falsifying or modifying data at least once.

Wells said Finelli’s study was based on scientists reporting their own behavior, a key difference between it and the internal study UW conducted.

Chemistry department chair James Weisshaar estimated, after 29 years at UW, he has seen about five instances of actual falsification, often due to “overly ambitious” graduate students.

The most recent incidents of misconduct at UW surfaced in December 2009 and this summer when the United States Department of Agriculture uncovered multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act at UW.

These violations occurred after a UW primate researcher, Michele Basso, lost her animal research privileges due to conduct violations. Basso has since been reinstated with stricter oversights.