Responsible Conduct of Research

In an article published in the New York Times on Novemer 29, 2006, Nicholas Wade reported on the 2004 and 2005 abrications of the South Korean stem cell researcher Dr. wang Woo-suk that were published in the journal Science. erald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh was the first uthor of one of the publications even though he had conucted none of the experiments described in the publication. oth publications were subsequently retracted. These frauduent publications were not detected by safeguards in the scintific process, but by a whistle-blower in Dr. Hwang’s laboatory who broke the story to the South Korean television tation MBC. One consequence of this egregious aberration of conduct f research was the formation of a panel led by John I. Brauan at Stanford University. The panel recommended four hanges in the review policy of Science: 1 a risk-assessment ethod should be developed to flag high-visibility manucripts for additional review and scrutiny, 2 authors should dentify their unique contributions to a manuscript, 3 more aw data in support of the publication should be contained in n online site, and 4 leading science journals including Scince and Nature should develop common standards for reiew in order to prevent deceitful authors from favoring jourals with lower review standards. Perhaps there is the necessity for another commandment or researchers: Thou shall not deceive or engage in duplicious behavior. This statement means that scientists must not abricate, falsify, or misrepresent data or information. A losely related topic is that of bias; scientists should strive to void or at least to minimize all forms of bias in their work. In he same ethical category is the failure to acknowledge the elevant work of others. Another egregious ethical offence is the act of plagiarism n which an individual knowingly or unknowingly claims to e the originator of someone else’s words, ideas, or images. ince the ethical problem of plagiarism is so often discussed I resent a standard definition. Plagiarism is the representation f someone else’s ideas, words, images, or concepts as one’s wn. Both plagiarism and underserved authorship are exmples of violations against the principle of fairness, which is ne of the foundations of responsible conduct of research. Recent advances in biotechnology and biomedicine coninually generate new ethical concerns and questions. Histori-