Unethical Acts

Unregistered Trials Are Unethical

Susanne McCabe I fi nd the arguments raised by the PLoS Medicine editors very useful [1] as I had not considered that a scientifi c community would tolerate barring access to registers of trials. It leaves huge gaps for exploitation by privileged groups. It is not only colleagues in research and allied professions who need access but the global community, including members of the public whereve...

Unethical Postgraduate Supervision

Dear Editor, Many years ago unprofessional supervisors were identified as one of the main reasons for the withdrawal of a student’s study. Recently in some universities, unethical supervision has become an increasing concern of students and ethic committees. The last few years has witnessed an increase in the withdrawal rate of students who quit their study because of the poor guidance of their...

Authorship inflation is unethical.

I thank Dr. Kakuk for his response to my article. Unfortunately, he seems to have misunderstood my arguments. He claims that I “fail to differentiate the problem of authorship from the problem of IFs usage”. In fact, I never actually directly linked these two problems, except to say that both trap researchers in a prisoner’s dilemma. Kakuk also claims that “The inappropriate usage of IF is not ...

Homeopathy Is Unscientific and Unethical

When is patient education unethical?

Although patient education is central to the ethical practice of nursing, it can be practiced in an ethically contested or unethical way. It is sometimes used to: forward a societal goal the individual might not have chosen; assume that patients should learn to accommodate unjust treatment; exclude the views of all except the dominant health care provider group; limit the knowledge a patient ca...