Nautilus

The retraction of a Nature Chemical Biology paper is a step toward a full accounting of a case of scientific misconduct, as described in the journal's July editorial (4, 381; 2008).The paper is by Won et al., "Small molecule–based reversible reprogramming of cellular lifespan" (Nat. Chem. Biol. 2, 369–374, 2006). The editorial describes the process by which the paper was considered and the process by which the problems came to light, first involving undeclared financial interests, then, some time later, lack of reproducibility of the data. From the editorial:

As stated in the retraction text, all nine of the paper's authors have agreed that the paper must be retracted. However, Tae Kook Kim, the principal investigator and corresponding author, did not agree to the retraction statement signed by the other authors and asserts that any scientific irregularities are limited to a subset of the paper's experiments. Although circumstances did not allow complete agreement among the paper's authors and the text does not list all of the scientific concerns that were raised in the initial inquiries, the published retraction statement and 'Editor's note' provide abundant explanation for why the paper must be removed from the scientific literature. We commend CGK scientists for raising the initial concerns with the Science and Nature Chemical Biology papers and the KAIST investigating committees for their efforts to date. It is reassuring that Korean institutions are taking a hard line on scientific misconduct. However, we do question the timing and content of the KAIST press release of February 29, 2008, which was made public without advance notice to the journal. It is not unusual for an institute to announce that an investigation is underway and to make another announcement at its conclusion. Ideally, though, investigating committees contact journals well in advance of making public statements, thereby ensuring that the information communicated is accurate at all stages. The potential negative impacts of scientific misconduct allegations on the accused and on the public perception of science cannot be underestimated. Statements to the press are useful, but first priorities should always be determining the facts quickly, giving due process to investigators under suspicion and correcting the literature.........As the KAIST committee completes its deliberations, we urge them to provide a full accounting of the case and make their findings widely available in English. This example would serve as a model for future investigations committed to maintaining the integrity of science and the scientific literature.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 26, 2008
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the text of an Editorial published in Nature on 19 June (453, 957; 2008)

Many researchers would like to believe that scientific misconduct is very rare. But news reported in this issue (see page 969), and the survey results reported by Sandra Titus and her colleagues in the Commentary on page 980, challenge that comfortable assumption. Titus's team found that almost 9% of the respondents in their survey, mainly biomedical scientists, had witnessed some form of scientific misconduct in the past three years, and that 37% of those incidents went unreported.
The results suggest a research climate in which scientific misconduct, although uncommon, is certainly not an anomaly. Titus et al. outline a number of measures to address this situation, including better protection for whistleblowers, and promotion of a 'zero tolerance' culture in which scientists have just as much responsibility to report others' misconduct as they have for their own behaviour.

Continue reading "Solutions, not scapegoats" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 23, 2008
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chronicle of Higher Education (29 May 2008) has published an article by Jeffrey R. Young about image "beautification", or to put it more bluntly, "fakery", in papers reporting research results. The article describes the discovery of "doctored" images by editors at the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and outlines some of the processes that it and other journals have put in place to uncover the practice, complete with some case-histories. All papers accepted for publication by the Journal of Cell Biology, for example, are subjected to an image check. Dr Linda Miller, US Executive Editor of Nature, was interviewed for the Chronicle's article:

At Nature Publishing Group, which produces some of the world's leading science journals, image guidelines were developed in 2006, and last year the company's research journals began checking two randomly selected papers in each issue for image tampering, says Linda J. Miller, U.S. executive editor of Nature and the Nature Publishing Group's research journals. So far no article has been rejected as a result of the checking, she says. Ms. Miller and other editors say that in most cases of image tampering, scientists intend to beautify their figures rather than lie about their findings. In one case, an author notified the journal that a scientist working in his lab had gone too far in trying to make figures look clean. The journal determined that the conclusions were sound, but "they wound up having to print a huge correction, and this was quite embarrassing for the authors," she says. Ms. Miller wrote an editorial for Nature stressing that scientists should present their images without alterations, rather than thinking polished images will help them get published. Many images are of gels, which are ways to detect proteins or other molecules in a sample, and often they are blurry. No matter, says Ms. Miller. "We like dirt—not all gels run perfectly," she says. "Beautification is not necessary. If your data is solid, it shines through."

Nature journals' image guidelines can be found here. Also on this page are links to free-access editorials in the Nature journals about our policies and why we have them, together with an invitation to authors and other scientists to comment online.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 19, 2008
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature 453, 145 (8 May2008):
A researcher who blew the whistle over animal-rights issues at the University of Nevada in Reno went to court last week to try to win his job back after being fired.
Nutrition researcher Hussein Hussein, a tenured professor, was sacked last month by university president Milton Glick, despite a recommendation by a university administrative hearing that he merely be reprimanded or demoted. Four years ago, Hussein reported deficiencies in the care of laboratory animals that led to US$11,400 in fines against the university. He claims the university sought to fire him in retaliation.
After the administrative hearing, he was cleared of charges of plagiarizing graduate student work, but found to have incorrectly reported on $377,000 in grants, thus denying the university overhead costs.
Hussein's lawyer asked a Nevada judge to reinstate him, arguing that he was improperly fired. A spokeswoman says the university acted appropriately, and will vigorously defend its actions.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 13, 2008
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sherry Towers, a particle physicist who is now a statistician, reports a study using public databases to study the career paths of 57 former postdoctoral researchers from Fermilab who worked on the Run II Dzero experiment to examine if males and females were treated in a gender-blind fashion on the experiment. Dr Towers's results are highlighted in a Nature news story this week (23 April 2008) .
Female researchers were on average significantly more productive compared to their male peers, yet were allocated only one-third the amount of conference presentations based on their productivity. The study also finds that the dramatic gender bias in allocation of conference presentations appeared to have significant negative impact on the academic career advancement of the females.
Nature contacted some physicists to ask them their views. Some are sceptical, arguing for example that one of the criteria used in the study, internal papers, are not necessarily a direct measure of productivity, and that the small number of physicists surveyed is not enough to prove systematic bias. But even those expressing scepticism do not doubt that females suffer gender discrimination. Several female physicists contacted by Nature said Towers's data matched their personal experiences of institutional sexism in physics. According to the news story, Fermilab did undertake a review of its policies after the complaints of gender bias.
Various points of view are expressed in the comment thread to the Nature story, to which you are welcome to add your experiences and/or views.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 24, 2008
Categories: Careers, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

The eternal question of authorship is in the frame in a News story in the current issue of Nature (452, 791; 2008), in which it is reported that thousands of of documents relating to Merck’s withdrawn painkiller rofecoxib (Vioxx) were were reviewed by medical researchers, and seem to show Merck’s extensive involvement in ghost-writing and ‘guest authorship’ of research and review papers. The results of the analysis are published by J. Ross et al. in the Journal of the American Medical Association (299, 1800–1812; 2008).
By omitting the names — or downgrading the involvement — of drug-industry writers, and adding the names of academics who were not substantially involved in a paper, the industry’s role in research may be concealed. And doctors may be misled over the independence of the work. For example, one of the Merck-held documents lists a number of clinical trials in which a Merck employee is to be author of the first draft of a manuscript. However, when these trials were published, in 16 of 20 of the articles an external academic is listed as first author. Merck denies these allegations.
See also Spoonful of Medicine, the blog of Nature Medicine.
There is further discussion of the JAMA article, and the implications for authorship credit, at Nature Network.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 21, 2008
Categories: Authorship, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a Commentary in this week’s Nature (452, 686-687; 2008), Christine Boesz and Nigel Lloyd of the OECD propose a practical framework for examining misconduct allegations in multinational scientific teams: it is imperative, they argue, for researchers in cross-boarder collaborations to be held accountable for the integrity of their work. In the same issue of the journal, a related Editorial (Nature 452, 665; 2008) and News Feature (Nature 452, 682-684; 2008) also explore collaborations: what makes them fail and how they can work better.
Do you know of international misconduct-related documents that could inform the templates the OECD hopes to produce? Have you encountered relevant situations or challenges while conducting research with scientists from other countries? How were these situations resolved? We invite you to provide your views and experiences at the Nature Network News and Opinion forum.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 10, 2008
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

An Institute of Medicine report recommends that the United States government create a programme to provide consistent guidelines for clinical interventions. The reliability of the guidelines will depend on the availability of the clinical data to be assessed, according to this month's (March 2008) Editorial in Nature Medicine (14, 223; 2008).
The problem is that "Widespread regional variation in how health care providers treat some conditions in the United States reflects the sobering fact that, for many interventions, there is no consensus about what constitutes effective clinical care. Physicians and health care providers must try to make sense of innumerable and conflicting guidelines in order to choose the best available intervention for their patient. Scientific, systematic review of data from medical literature and clinical trials is crucial to forming a reliable evidence base of what actually works in health care. With this in mind, professional medical organizations, patient advocacy groups, government agencies and others have synthesized available data on the efficacy of particular interventions and have produced guidelines recommending certain courses of action for specific conditions. The problem is that there is no consensus among the approaches to systematic review, and, more troublesome, no clear understanding of the best methods for assessing the evidence."
The Institute of Medicine has stepped in to recommend a plan to help resolve conflicting medical advice (reported in a news story at Nature Medicine 14, 226; 2008) by three methods: first, identify interventions that are priorities for evaluation; second, develop standardized and reliable methods for performing systematic reviews of all the available data about a given intervention; and third, develop standards for producing clinical guidelines. The Editorial discusses some of the practical difficulties, concluding that the Institute of Medicine report is an important step forward but will require legislation if it is to work.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 13, 2008
Categories: Data availability, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Commentary in the current issue of Nature by Mounir Errami and Harold Garner, A tale of two citations (Nature 451, 397-399;2008), has predictably received a lot of attention. In a nutshell, the authors ask whether scientists are publishing more duplicate papers, and by their newly devised, automated search of seven million biomedical abstracts, provide the answer that yes, they are.
At the Nature Precedings forum on Nature Network, for example, Hilary Spencer wonders whether posting one’s paper on a preprint server, which has been suggested as one possible check/balance in the system, may rather "facilitate the very plagiarism that it can help to later detect. For many authors, this is a legitimate fear in today’s cut-and-paste climate. Is the risk (of facilitating plagiarism) worth the benefit (of facilitating detection)?" A systematic check by journals of their submitted papers against preprint servers for plaigiarism would be needed if Hilary's suggestion has any foundation (see this Nautilus post for details of an earlier scandal along these lines). Such a check, of course, would be another cost to the publisher of the journal before a research paper could be published.
At the Publishing in the New Millennium forum, also at Nature Network, there is an informed and passionate debate among the scientists in the group about whether more duplicate papers are being published in their fields; whether there are legitimate reasons to publish similar versions of the same paper in different journals; and if there is a problem, how it can be stemmed.
Martin Fenner writes about the issue on his blog, Gobbledygook, and from this post links to some other blog discussion arising from the Commentary. There is another post here, on Nascent (NPG's web publishing department blog) by Euan Adie, which refers to the plagiarism-detection software Cross Check.
In the middle of all the heated discussion, it is worth bearing in mind the policy advice that the Nature journals provide for authors and potential authors who would like guidance for how we, the editors, see this issue. So please see our author and reviewers' website for our polices on: plagiarism, fabrication and due credit for unpublished data; duplicate publication; authorship in general; and confidentiality/pre-publicity. We hope that these policies provide clear and helpful guidance. Authors and potential authors wishing more details can find links to relevant, free-access, journal editorials on each of these pages. Feedback and suggestions are welcome, either as comments to this post or via email.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 28, 2008
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ron A. Bouchard of the University of Alberta, and Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto, write in a Commentary in this month's Nature Biotechnology (Nat. Biotechnol. 26, 31-36; 2008) that the allocation of risks and benefits of publicly sponsored biomedical research is becoming increasingly skewed toward for-profit entities and against the public interest. A legitimate solution to this imbalance would be to levy compulsory government royalty fees on commercial products made possible by public efforts.
The authors argue that "public–private partnerships can be particularly valuable in circumstances involving large transaction costs associated with novel biomedical inventions aimed at the global public good. That said, a combination of self-interest and anxiety in the face of globalization has led to wide swings of the pendulum of S&T policy and scholarship in recent years, with argument for expansive IPR rights on the one hand and their abolition in favor of a completely open source model on the other. Neither position is likely to be balanced or workable over the long term, as both may skew too far to private or public interests." A compulsory government royalty on technologies commercialized using public money, they argue in their Commentary, is a necessary 'third way' to protect the interests of for-profit entities and those of the public.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 18, 2008
Categories: Data availability, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two scientists writing a Commentary article, "Professor's little helper", in the current (20 December) issue of Nature (450, 1157-1159; 2007) want to stimulate your brains – in more ways than one.
Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir from the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge University argue that the increased usage of brain-boosting drugs by ill and healthy individuals raises ethical questions that cannot be ignored. An informal questionnaire Sahakian and Morein-Zamir sent to some of their scientific colleagues in the United States and United Kingdom revealed fairly casual use by academics, and we now want to hear your views on the topic.
The authors' arguments can be read in more detail in their Commentary at Nature (450, 1157-1159; 2007). A Nature editorial in the 15 November issue (Nature 450, 320; 2007) also discussed some of the ethical issues surrounding drug-based enhancement in healthy individuals inspired by a longer discussion paper from the British Medical Association.
To trigger broader discussion of these issues Sahakian and Morein-Zamir propose the following questions:
> Should adults with severe memory and concentration problems be given cognitive enhancing drugs?
> If such drugs have only mild side effects, should they be prescribed more widely for other psychiatric disorders?
> Do the same arguments apply for young children and adolescents with neuropsychiatric disorders, such as those suffering from ADHD?
> Would you boost your own brain power?
> How would you react if you knew your colleagues – or your students – were taking cognitive enhancers?
> How should society react?
Please contribute to this online discussion. We especially want to hear from you if you’re already using these drugs – or if you know people who are. What are your reasons for taking, or not taking, them?
For the next two weeks, the authors of the Nature Commentary will be joining in the conversation at the Nature Network forum: we look forward to meeting you there.
See also the related post, Brain doping, over at Action Potential.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 20, 2007
Categories: Disciplines, Education, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature's obituary of Leslie Orgel (1927–2007) :

Although Orgel was a theoretician, he always demanded that theory be subject to rigorous experimental validation. This, he felt, was especially true in the field of the origins of life, where "theories are a dime a dozen and facts are in short supply". He took great pleasure in a positive result, to the point of rooting for the pen on a graph-plotter during chromatography experiments. But he also delighted in negative results, because they pushed him to devise new hypotheses. This, of course, is the way scientists are supposed to behave, but Orgel was one of the few who actually did so.

The full obituary, by Gerald F. Joyce, is at Nature 450, 627; 2007.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 11, 2007
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Editorial in the December issue of Nature Nanotechnology , A little knowledge (Nature Nanotechnology 2, 731; 2007) acknowledges that communicating the risks and benefits associated with nanotechnology to the general public is more complex than researchers might have expected. According to surveys, one of which is published in the same issue of the journal, the public is not interested in the possible risks of the technology (despite Michael Crichton's best efforts).
In their report, Scientists worry about some risks more than the public (Nature Nanotechnology 2, 732 - 734; 2007), Dietram A. Scheufele et al. compare two recent US surveys among nanoscientists and the general public, concluding that "in general, nanoscientists are more optimistic than the public about the potential benefits of nanotechnology. However, for some issues related to the environmental and long-term health impacts of nanotechnology, nanoscientists were significantly more concerned than the public."
One interesting conclusion of the research is that industry and academic scientists are among the very few groups the public trusts the most for information about nanotechnology — greater than government bodies, regulatory agencies and news media. The authors write: "Nanotechnology may, therefore, be one of the first emerging technologies where academia and business have the ability to reach out directly to a public who trusts the information they provide. Ironically, nanotechnology may also be the first emerging technology for which scientists may have to explain to that public why they should be more rather than less concerned about some potential risks."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 07, 2007
Categories: Biosecurity, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

In his EMBO Reports editorial this month (8, 1087; 2007), Hope, hype and hypocrisy, Frank Gannon provides examples of overinflated claims made in some recent publications and press releases. He points out that, to the unsuspecting reader, these claims give the impression that a cure or treatment for a disease is just around the corner when the reality is almost always that it isn't. Reasons for this escalation of hype are addressed, but:

"Ultimately, the problem is that scientists over-promise by sending messages of being close to their goals even if this is not true. They also send messages that, as soon as the first results come in, the next steps to real applications are quicker than the previous research stage; this is not true either."

Systematic hyperbole and self-promotion are not only dishonest, but threaten the public's trust and support for science, and ultimately will undermine research itself. Or as Dr Gannon puts it: "an atmosphere of trust and transparency is better than a barrage of exaggerated claims and promises."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 04, 2007
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's Nature addresses how the responsibilities of co-authors for a scientific paper’s integrity could be made more explicit (Nature 450, 1; 2007). The text of the (free access) editorial:

The two most notorious frauds of modern science, by the stem-cell biologist Woo Suk Hwang and the physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, both brought into question the responsibilities of co-authors in the oversight of their colleagues’ work. But despite the concerns raised after these episodes, there remains a need for a clearer understanding, both within a collaboration and by readers of the eventual papers, of the various contributions made by the authors not only to the research but also to safeguarding its integrity.
One welcome development in transparency was pioneered by the medical journals. Authorship of a paper is justified when a researcher has contributed significantly to the work being described and to the writing or approval of the manuscript. But the traditional publication style is entirely opaque as to which co-author contributed what. Concern about ‘honorary authorship’ — in which an author is unacceptably included for reasons other than any scientific contribution — and about this lack of transparency has led to the increasing use of statements in papers that specify authors’ contributions. Some medical journals require them, and others, including the Nature family, strongly encourage their use and may yet make them compulsory.
Such statements delineate contributions to the work but do not underwrite its integrity. Something more is needed.
It is too glib to state that every co-author of a paper shares full responsibility for its content. A researcher who specializes in the radio-active dating of rock strata cannot necessarily be expected to vouch for a palaeontologist’s analysis of fossils within them — especially if the work has been carried out in labs on different continents.
The fact that simple trust may no longer suffice is a sad reflection on recent scientific history, but anything that supports public confidence in research has to be welcomed, provided that its burden is not too great. What follows is a proposal in that direction, on which we invite readers’ comments.
We suggest that journals should require that every manuscript has at least one author per collaborating research group who will go on record in a way that collectively vouches for the paper’s standards. Each would sign a statement with reference to Nature’s publication policies as follows:
“I have ensured that every author in my research group has seen and approved this manuscript. The data that are presented in the figures and tables were reviewed in raw form, the analysis and statistics applied are appropriate and the figures are accurate representations of the data. Any manipulations of images conform to Nature’s guidelines. All journal policies on materials and data sharing, ethical treatment of research subjects, conflicts of interest, biosecurity etc. have been adhered to. I have confidence that all of the conclusions presented are based on accurate extrapolations from the data collected for this study and that my colleagues listed as co-authors have contributed and deserve the designation ‘author’.”
Principal investigators traditionally bask in the glory of a well-received paper. We are proposing now that they willingly open themselves to sanctions that could be brought to bear should the paper turn out to have major problems.
Misconduct investigators go out of their way to spare anyone apart from the direct perpetrators, but they have indicated concerns over the degree of oversight within collaborations. If the damage to reputations were more widespread in the event of fraud, researchers would be even more fastidious about the data emanating from their labs and the due diligence they would impose. The chances of major frauds, with their disproportionate impact on the reputation of science as a whole, would be diminished.
We invite comments from readers on this editorial.
(The Nature journals' current policies can be seen at Nature's Guide to Authors and at the Author and Reviewers' website.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 31, 2007
Categories: Authorship, Ethics, Policies | Permalink | Comments (23)

Juan C. Gallardo of Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York writes in this week's Correspondence (Nature 449, 572; 2007):

As chair of the American Physical Society's Committee on International Freedom of Scientists, I wish to express my alarm about the kafkaesque situation confronting the Russian biologist Oleg Mediannikov, reported in your News story 'Russian scientists see red over clampdown' (Nature 449, 122–123; 2007).
The American Physical Society is the biggest organization of physicists in the United States, with a large international membership. The society is independent of any government, and its international freedom committee is responsible for monitoring the human rights of scientists throughout the world, including the United States, and assisting those in need. In the past couple of years our efforts have been partially focused on Russia, where several scientists collaborating with foreign researchers have been intimidated and prosecuted.
As well as Mediannikov, we are actively assisting Valentin Danilov, Oscar Kaibyshev, Igor Sutyagin and Oleg Korobeinichev. We are committed to defending our colleagues at risk and we will continue to raise our voices whenever scholars encounter a prohibition on travelling, publishing or pursuing research. We call upon scientific human-rights organizations to join us to protest at restrictions, by any government, on the free exchange of ideas, be it by denying visas or barring scholars from attending conferences or taking academic positions.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 29, 2007
Categories: Ethics, Policies | Permalink | Comments (0)

A news story in the current issue of Nature (449, 512-513; 2007) reports on how the US National Science Foundation (NSF) is investigating how researchers account for time spent on federally funded projects. Auditors have found that the records kept are often not accurate, undermining the ability of the NSF to ensure that its grants are spent appropriately.
Although the audits may simply reflect record-keeping lapses, they could have significant financial impacts. For instance, in a grant- rich school such as the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, cutting back on indirect costs by just 0.5% would save $600,000.
An Editorial in the same issue of the journal (Nature 449, 508; 2007) points out that "the NSF hasn't decided to conduct the audits arbitrarily. Whistleblowers at two universities highlighted cases in which researchers failed to tell the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about the amount of time they spent on projects it had funded. The universities involved subsequently repaid the money.", concluding: "These NSF efforts may, in time, serve as an instructive template for the NIH, a far larger agency that has done little as yet to monitor its grantees' effort reporting. With so much money at stake, a little extra paperwork is not necessarily a bad idea."
You can add your comments to the news story online at the journal website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 08, 2007
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

The European Science Foundation and the US Office of Research Intergrity have created a web page of resources on scientific conduct and misconduct: References & Background Reading : European Science Foundation. The page contains links to relevant articles in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Science and Research Policy, as well as information about books published on the topic. The list is part of the background for the World Conference of Science Integrity, being held this week (16-19 September 2007) at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal. From the Conference website:
The World Conference on Research Integrity is the first global forum convened to provide researchers, research administrators, research sponsors, journal editors, representatives from professional societies, policymakers, and others an opportunity to discuss strategies for harmonizing research misconduct policies and fostering responsible conduct in research.
The Nature journals' policies on ethics in publishing can be found at our authors' and reviewers' website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 18, 2007
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dr M. Nabeel Ghayur, of McMaster University Ontario, writes: I would like to add some points to Nature's News Feature "Human-subjects research: trial and error"(Nature 448, 530-532; 2007), on the important topic of clinical-trial review by regional versus central review boards. I feel that the main question is not about who conducts the review, but about it being performed thoroughly and diligently.
It is more than 40 years since the unanimous approval of the Declaration of Helsinki, yet we are still faced with many challenges in this area of research on human subjects. Episodes such as the fatal testing of gene therapy on Jesse Gelsinger in 1999 and the TeGenero fiasco in 2006 of severe side effects of a phase-I monoclonal antibody in six men, demonstrate that the need for stringent measures when it comes to clinical trials involving humans cannot be over-emphasized.
The need for stringent oversight is even more vital at a time of widespread outsourcing of trials from the West to developing countries, particularly in Africa and Asia. Many of these countries remain without concrete laws and legislation, sometimes without even functioning ethics committees in individual health-care institutions. It is imperative that trials are monitored to the best standards available worldwide.
We hear of cases such as that of Ru Huang of Johns Hopkins, accused of being engaged in unethical trials involving testing of drugs in India without formal consent (see Nature 412, 466; 2001). More recently, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was sued by Government of Nigeria for $9 billion for allegedly carrying out trials in children without parental or official approval. These examples surely reflect the importance of strict ethics review of clinical trial proposals irrespective of the authority responsible for performing it.
However, as outlined in your News Feature, it does not make sense to have unnecessarily time-consuming bureaucracy, as delays can be equivalent to introduction of beneficial therapies. Informed consent forms should be kept as simple, short and meaningful as possible. Increasing the length of a form so as not to miss any information can make it harder for the patient to grasp, particularly a potential participant from a country where people are less well-educated and who will struggle to read and understand scientific and ethical jargon. There is a dire need to make the process of ethics review extensive, yet concise and effective, both for investigators and patients.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 07, 2007
Categories: Ethics, Policies | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's Nature (449, 8; 2007) features a News story about a plaigiarism scandal involving more than a dozen theoretical physicists at four universities in Turkey. Almost 70 papers by 15 authors have been removed from the popular preprint server arXiv, where many physicists post their work, by the server's moderators. They allege that the papers plagiarize the works of others or contain inappropriate levels of overlap with earlier articles. This is probably the largest single incident of its sort ever seen on the server, according to physicist Paul Ginsparg of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and founder of arXiv. "What these guys did was way over the line," he says. See here for the full version of the story (site licence or subscription required).
According to the Nature News story, Ginsparg says that it's not uncommon for scientists with a poor command of English to plagiarize introductions or background paragraphs from earlier work, often adding an appropriate citation. He thinks that although such practices are ethically questionable, it is inappropriate to be overly draconian. A recent analysis turned up numerous examples of plagiarism on the arXiv server (see Nature 444, 524–525; 2006).
The Nature journals' policies on plagiarism can be found on our free-access author and referees' website. The policy page contains links to various (free access) Editorials written in the Nature journals on the topic which, taken together, we hope provide a useful guide for authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 06, 2007
Categories: Ethics, Policies | Permalink | Comments (0)

Language Log: Citation Plagiarism?
From the Language Log entry linked above: "Plagiarism normally involves either the unacknowledged borrowing of someone else's idea or the unacknowledged borrowing of someone else's words. A third kind of plagiarism is, however, occasionally mentioned, namely the citation of a reference without acknowledging that it came from another source. If author Jones reads a paper by Smith and thereby learns of a paper by Doe and cites Doe without mentioning that he owes the reference to Smith, he has committed this kind of plagiarism, if plagiarism it be."
Bill Poser, author of the Language Log entry, goes on to argue why this type of plagarism is not, in his view, plagiarism, as there is no deception involved. The authors of the original reference may, in Dr Poser's view, "deserve more credit than they receive, but that is a different matter."

See here for the JISC plagiarism advisory service, which provides generic advice and guidance on all aspects of plagiarism prevention and detection to institutions, academics and students.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 22, 2007
Categories: Citation analysis, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (1)

There is no greater burden of responsibility for scientists than that placed on those who conduct medical research on human subjects, according to an Editorial in Nature this week (448, 511-512; 2007). On the rare occasions that this duty is inappropriately discharged, the results can be devastating. Even so, once the initial outcry dies down, little tends to change.
The diverse collection of institutional review boards (IRBs) that oversee such research in the United States barely qualifies as a 'system'. Despite repeated attempts by the Institute of Medicine and others to highlight their shortfalls, the quality and effectiveness of the boards remain patchy (see the News Feature on page 530 of the same issue of the journal).
To strengthen the way human clinical trials are overseen, adequate funding for the Office for Human Research Protections and more widespread accreditation of the IRBs (ensuring proper training and support for committee members) would be a start. But this is not enough, states the Editorial -- real improvements in the IRB procedures are required. Some have suggested that the review of multicentre studies needs to be centralized, and certainly clearer ethical guidelines for local review boards could be provided (for example, on the question of payment for volunteers).
The Nature journals' policy for authors concerning research on human subjects is available here. As ever, your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 08, 2007
Categories: Disciplines, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

From this week's (21 June issue) Nature Correspondence (Nature 447, 908; 2007):

The US Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) processes the applications of foreign students for the US Medical Licensing Examination, which evaluates candidates' basic and clinical knowledge in medicine. The examination has two steps, both of which must be passed for the ECFMG to recognize the individual as a medical doctor in the United States.
As a medical student, I applied for step 1 in January 2007, entering my country (Iran) in the contact address section. A message in red letters appeared on the registration page: "It has come to our attention that ECFMG may be subject to specific United States federal regulations that prohibit entities from doing business with or providing a service to any individuals who have an address of residence in specific restricted countries. The country of Iran is included on this list of restricted countries. In light of this, ECFMG is not able to allow you to request this service."
The political status of Iran or any other nation is not relevant to education. The result of the restriction is that all medical students and graduates who live in Iran are prevented from taking the US licensing examination. This surely is academic discrimination against a whole country.
Sina Zarrintan
Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 25, 2007
Categories: Careers, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

This letter is reproduced in entirety from Nature's Correspondence in today's (21 June) issue (Nature 447, 908; 2007).
Scientists should promote co-operation, not boycott

Since 1931, the International Council for Science (ICSU) has upheld the principle of the universality of science, based on the right of scientists to work without discrimination on the grounds of citizenship, religion, creed, political stance, ethnic origin, race, colour, age or gender.
The entire ICSU membership, representing the scientific community in 112 countries and all disciplines, has consistently expressed its unequivocal support for this principle. This stance has stood the test of time throughout the Cold War, apartheid in South Africa and the new challenges posed by international terrorism. It is a strong expression of solidarity across the international science community: a critical reference point for individual scholars confronted with threats to their freedom.
The decision by the congress of the UK University and College Union to recommend that its members bar academic exchanges with Israeli researchers is a flagrant breach of this principle. It has rightly drawn substantial adverse comment from scientists, newspaper columnists and human-rights activists in the United Kingdom and internationally.
It is easy to understand the strong feelings generated by conflicts and people's desire to demonstrate their opposition to the actions of governments. But to do so through the medium of individual scholars is to sacrifice a profoundly important principle of freedom and solidarity. In situations of strife and conflict, it is surely the duty of scientists to promote international understanding and co-operation — not to penalize each other for the shortcomings of their governments.

Bengt Gustafsson
ICSU Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 21, 2007
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)