The Ethics of Research
In an ideal world, scientists would be able to blissfully conduct experiments without feeling pressures for obtaining grants, contemplating the implications, or jumping through hoops. Unfortunately, we live in a world that requires researchers to do more than “just” contribute to bodies of knowledge. Welcome to reality!
Here in the real world, scientists frequently assume the roles of politicians—making trade-offs and navigating through bureaucratic nonsense. Need more money for a project? FORGET IT. Reduce yourself to begging or do without. Your work hitting some snags? TOO BAD, now you won’t get published. Better yet, don’t have money or promising data? WHOOPS! You’re a lost cause.
So with such a brilliant combination of factors—competition for money, racing to publish, and pressure from upstairs—it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that some people start to crack. (Am I overly cynical? Perhaps. But we need to accept the reality.) As a consequence, we start to see the more negative aspects of our research world. Retractions, investigations, and unethical behavior rear their ugly heads. Data becomes tainted by the lack of Responsible Conduct in Research (RCR).
Eric Poehlman, a research at UVM, provided lame excuses to an investigative panel about the discrepancies in his data. Claiming that Excel illiteracy coupled with some complicated statistical equations was the cause for confusion in his lab, Poehlman was desperately trying to save himself. However, his defense did not work—he served jail time for his data forgery. At the sentencing hearing, Poehlman blamed the system, saying “I take full responsibility for the type of position that I had that was so grant-dependent. But it created a maladaptive behavior pattern. I was on a treadmill, and I couldn’t get off.” Poehlman made it sound as though he was trapped in the system, unable to get off the treadmill, forced to forge data. It wasn’t him, but rather the system that had perpetrated the immoral and illegal acts. Is that a good excuse? Can you simply say that you are a victim of the overlying system and have no ability to escape?
Walter DeNino, the lab technician under Poehlman, didn’t think so. He didn’t meekly accept his mentor’s falsifications. Although it meant endangering his own career, DeNino acted ethically by reporting Poehlman. Likewise, in the movie And the Band Played On we see the struggle between responsible and irresponsible conduct in research. Dr. Don Francis was investigating the source of the AIDS epidemic in the United States under the CDC. Despite a drastic lack of resources, Francis did not cease stop trying to understand the epidemic. Willingly sharing blood samples with French researchers, Francis did not try to impede the identification of the AIDS virus by supplying samples solely to Dr. Robert Gallo, an American researcher. Francis was not deterred by Gallo’s erratic and threatening phone calls. Instead, Francis insisted that he aimed to protect the general public and not the credentials of Gallo who was competing with the French. Politics certainly play a large role in research.
As for publishing papers, there also exist questions of ethics and responsible research. For example, retractions reveal the presence of data falsification, insufficient data, or unethical protocol. The March 2000 article by Kugler et al., in Nature Medicine “Regression of human metastatic renal cell carcinoma after vaccination with tumor cell−dendritic cell hybrids” was retracted in 2003. The editors of Nature Medicine chose to retract this article following a nearly two year investigation of the study. Not only was there insufficient documentation of work , but also the method used to study the dendrite cells was considered unethical. As a result, the editors chose to retract. They made their decision after the investigation of the study was completed, rather than automatically choosing to retract the paper. They do warn that this paper shouldn’t be cited as evidence.
As we can see, the fight for ethical and responsible research is being waged. We can only hope that scientists have the personal strength to stand for what is ethical and responsible. If not, then the consequences are severe.
