Ethical Research: Why It Matters PDF

Ethical Research: Why it matters - Ethical decision-making is crucial in all aspects of research: - planning, conducting, analyzing, publishing and evaluating research - Students and faculty alike must act in accordance with professional ethics Ethics: Guiding Documents -...

Ethical Research: Why it matters - Ethical decision-making is crucial in all aspects of research: - planning, conducting, analyzing, publishing and evaluating research - Students and faculty alike must act in accordance with professional ethics Ethics: Guiding Documents - Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles for Psychologists - Ethics across disciplines (e.g., medical research) - Charter of Rights and Freedoms, various laws - Government of Canada Panel on Research Ethics: Tri-Council Policy Statement - Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans -- TCPS 2 (2018) Three key principles - Respect - enabling people to choose participation freely - Concern for welfare -- maximize benefits and minimize any possible harmful effects of research participation - Justice - fairness, distributing the benefits and burdens of participation in research Respect Autonomy: enabling people to choose participation freely - Informed consent -- research methods, all risks, privacy, confidentiality, withdrawal, debriefing - deception - informed consent can bias subject selection Welfare Risk-benefit analysis: an evaluation of the potential hazards of conducting a study, weighed against the potential benefits to participants and to society - Anonymity/privacy and confidentiality - Changing in the digital age - Confidential: the ethical principle that information is kept private, with disclosure limited to the minimum number of people necessary - Anonymous: there is no way to connect a person with their responses - Physical/psychological stress - Is it justified? - How study data will be used Justice - Fairness in: - Receiving the benefits of research - Bearing the burdens of research - Decision to include/exclude participants must be made on scientific grounds Moving from core principles to application - Ethical guidelines vs. rules A flowchart of benefits Description automatically generated - TCPS offers guidelines - Each study/situation is different - Jurisdictional variability - Research Ethics Boards REBs and ethics proposals - Exempt - Archival research - Publicly available data & statistics - Naturalistic observation of public behavior - Non-research activities (program evaluation, exams/tests) Exempt research: research in which there is absolutely no risk to participants and is thus exempt from REB review. REBs and ethics proposals cont. - Minimal risk research (the risks of harm to participants are no greater than the risks one would normally encounter in daily life - Expedited/Delegated Review - More than minimal risk research - Full Board Review Ethics in animal research - Higher control - 24/7 monitoring - Sometimes test what you cannot test in humans Canadian Council on Animal Care (the three R's) - Replacement (replacing the use of animals with some alternative or avoiding the use of animals altogether, e.g., mathematical modeling) - Reduction (minimize the number of animals being used) - Refinement (modifying procedures to minimize pain and distress) Ethics code: ethical principles and standards for all aspect of professional academic career Professional ethics in academic life  Data falsification or manipulation - Manufacturing or altering responses - Coding observational data - Manufacturing a co-author Questionable Research Practices - Ambiguity in research (researcher degrees of freedom) - P-hacking - Optional stopping - Dropping some dependent variables - Using covariates self-servingly - Dropping conditions **Fraud**: the intentional; misrepresentation of any aspect of research, including the presentation of results that are misleading or based on faulty data There are two ways in which fraud can be committed in science: 1. Fabricating data 2. Collecting real data but altering the numbers to fit the hypothesis Plagiarism: presenting another person's work or ideas as your own, intentionally or eve unintentionally, and is another form of serious scientific misconduct. The review process - Can it catch fraud? - Hacking the review process - Fake reviews (?) - "Friendly" editors - Registered reports Catching/Preventing fraud - Collaborators, research assistants - Failed replications - Posting data/Statistical techniques - Open science - Pre-registration - Decide on data-collection rules - Stick to them - Report them - Don't perform interim tests TUTORIAL What is the TCPS2? - Canadian guidelines for ethical conduct of research - Research: an undertaking intended to extend knowledge through disciplined inquiry or systematic investigation - Implies duties of honest and thoughtful inquiry, rigorous analysis, dissemination of research, and adherence to professional standards - Joint policy of CIHR, BSERC, SSHRC The TCPS2 is based on 3 core principles: - Respect for persons (the ethical principle stating that all individuals should have the free and informed choice whether to participate in research - Concern for welfare - Justice It is also based on these 5 additional principles: - Informed consent (the ethical principle that potential participants be informed in advance of all aspects of the research that might influence wither decision to participate) - Privacy and confidentiality - Risk-benefit analysis - Ethical review - Indigenous people **Secondary use of data**: analyzing data collected for other purposes, separate from the current research aim. Debriefing: an explanation of the purpose of research, given to participants following their participation REB: research ethics board Every academic institution has a REB, including the university of Windsor. They go through a proportional review, then a delegated/executive review if flags are raised, and then finally a full review if there has been a line crossed The REB process: - Preparation - REB application - Consent forms - Study advertisements - Questionnaires - TCPS2 certificates - Other? - Submission - Can take weeks-months - Different review dates - Revisions - Feedback received - Address revisions