Mentors have the responsibility to guide their mentees through academic and scientific challenges that they might encounter during their educational and professional development. In embodying the ...role of mentors, senior academics are also expected to transmit knowledge and competencies on the topic of research integrity to their junior colleagues. However, senior academics do not always succeed in transmitting responsible research practices and enhancing the research integrity climate. The implementation of the concept of reverse mentoring can be an option to overcome this issue. Different from traditional mentoring, the flow of information is reversed, going from juniors to seniors. Reverse mentoring, as a developmental partnership between mentees and mentors, has been already used successfully within the private sector and in medical education. In times in which most universities invest resources in organizing dedicated research integrity trainings for PhD candidates and junior researchers, it would be valuable to consider reverse mentoring for fostering responsible research practices and enhancing the research integrity climate. PhD candidates and junior researchers can join and fully contribute to the endeavor of enhancing the research integrity climate by co-creating, together with their senior colleagues a new-shared learning environment.
No university or research institution is immune to research misconduct or the more widespread problem of questionable research practices. To strengthen integrity in research, universities worldwide ...have developed education in research integrity. However, little is known about education in research integrity for PhD students in European research-intensive universities. We conducted a content analysis of didactic materials of 11 of the 23 members of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) to map out the content, format, frequency, duration, timing, and compulsory status of their training programmes and the characteristics of instructors of the onsite courses. Quantitative results revealed substantial variation in educational materials among the studied institutions. This variation might be because European research universities are free to design curricula without any requirements from the European, national, or institutional public funding channels. Given the challenges inherent to modern science and preventing misconduct, research institutions should empower future generations of researchers to engage in responsible research practices. To promote integrity in research among PhD students, we provide a set of recommendations for university-wide education in research integrity for doctoral trainees based on our investigation of educational resources.
Even though research integrity (RI) training programs have been developed in the last decades, it is argued that current training practices are not always able to increase RI-related awareness within ...the scientific community. Defining and understanding the capacities and lacunas of existing RI training are becoming extremely important for developing up-to-date educational practices to tackle present-day challenges. Recommendations on how to implement RI education have been primarily made by selected people with specific RI-related expertise. Those recommendations were developed mainly without consulting a broader audience with no specific RI expertise. Moreover, the academic literature lacks qualitative studies on RI training practices. For these reasons, performing in-depth focus groups with non-RI expert stakeholders are of a primary necessity to understand and outline how RI education should be implemented.
In this qualitative analysis, different focus groups were conducted to examine stakeholders' perspectives on RI training practices. Five stakeholders' groups, namely publishers and peer reviewers, researchers on RI, RI trainers, PhDs and postdoctoral researchers, and research administrators working within academia, have been identified to have a broader overview of state of the art.
A total of 39 participants participated in five focus group sessions. Eight training-related themes were highlighted during the focus group discussions. The training goals, timing and frequency, customisation, format and teaching approach, mentoring, compulsoriness, certification and evaluation, and RI-related responsibilities were discussed. Although confirming what was already proposed by research integrity experts in terms of timing, frequency, duration, and target audience in organising RI education, participants proposed other possible implementations strategies concerning the teaching approach, researchers' obligations, and development an evaluation-certification system.
This research aims to be a starting point for a better understanding of necessary, definitive, and consistent ways of structuring RI education. The research gives an overview of what has to be considered needed in planning RI training sessions regarding objectives, organisation, and teaching approach.
Parents are valuable stakeholders in research, clinical practice and policy development concerning autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Little is known, however, about how parents view and experience an ...ASD diagnosis. We investigated the evolution of parents’ views and experiences of the ASD diagnosis before, right after and 12 months after their child was diagnosed. Seventeen Flemish parents waiting for their young child’s diagnostic ASD assessment participated in a longitudinal study consisting of three in-depth interviews. They described their views and experiences concerning their child’s ASD diagnosis at three separate moments: (T1) prior to a diagnostic ASD assessment; (T2) immediately after their final feedback session at the end of the assessment; and (T3) 12 months later. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and analysed in Nvivo 11 according to the procedures of interpretative phenomenological analysis. We extracted three themes from the interview material throughout the parental journey: (T1) expecting certainty and exculpation; (T2) vulnerabilisation of the child; and (T3) pragmatic attitude and some disappointment. At T3, the parents overall had come to value the diagnosis because of two reasons: they were satisfied with their child’s entitlement to ASD-related support at school, and with the diagnosis’ impact on the child’s relationships with parents and teachers. Many parents experienced their child with an ASD diagnosis as vulnerable, and themselves as acutely responsible for his development and future. Our findings may lead to a higher satisfaction with the clinical trajectory in both clinician and parents by inspiring a conversation between them about parents’ evolving views, hopes and concerns related to their child’s ASD diagnosis.
Professional communities such as the medical community are acutely concerned with negligence: the category of misconduct where a professional does not live up to the standards expected of a ...professional of similar qualifications. Since science is currently strengthening its structures of self-regulation in parallel to the professions, this raises the question to what extent the scientific community is concerned with negligence, and if not, whether it should be. By means of comparative analysis of medical and scientific codes of conduct, we aim to highlight the role (or lack thereof) of negligence provisions in codes of conduct for scientists, and to discuss the normative consequences for future codes of conduct.
We collected scientific and medical codes of conduct in a selection of OECD countries, and submitted each code of conduct to comparative textual analysis.
Negligence is invariably listed as an infraction of the norms of integrity in medical codes of conduct, but only rarely so in the scientific codes. When the latter list negligence, they typically do not provide any detail on the meaning of 'negligence'.
Unlike codes of conduct for professionals, current codes of conduct for scientists are largely silent on the issue of negligence, or explicitly exclude negligence as a type of misconduct. In the few cases where negligence is stipulated to constitute misconduct, no responsibilities are identified that would help prevent negligence. While we caution against unreasonable negligence provisions as well as disproportionate sanctioning systems, we do argue that negligence provisions are crucial for justified trust in the scientific community, and hence that there is a very strong rationale for including negligence provisions in codes of conduct.
Plagiarism is considered as serious research misconduct, together with data fabrication and falsification. However, little is known about biomedical researchers' views on plagiarism. Moreover, it has ...been argued - based on limited empirical evidence - that perceptions of plagiarism depend on cultural and other determinants. The authors explored, by means of an online survey among 46 reputable universities in Europe and China, how plagiarism is perceived by biomedical researchers in both regions.
We collected work e-mail addresses of biomedical researchers identified through the websites of 13 reputable universities in Europe and 33 reputable universities in China and invited them to participate in an online anonymous survey. Our questionnaire was designed to assess respondents' views about plagiarism by asking whether they considered specific practices as plagiarism. We analyzed if respondents in China and Europe responded differently, using logistic regression analysis with adjustments for demographic and other relevant factors.
The authors obtained valid responses from 204 researchers based in China (response rate 2.1%) and 826 researchers based in Europe (response rate 5.6%). Copying text from someone else's publication without crediting the source, using idea(s) from someone else's publication without crediting the source and republishing one's own work in another language without crediting the source were considered as plagiarism by 98, 67 and 64%, respectively. About one-third of the respondents reported to have been unsure whether they had been plagiarizing. Overall, the pattern of responses was similar among respondents based in Europe and China. Nevertheless, for some items significant differences did occur in disadvantage of Chinese respondents.
Findings indicate that nearly all biomedical researchers understand (and disapprove of) the most obvious forms of plagiarism, but uncertainties and doubts were apparent for many aspects. And the minority of researchers who did not recognize some types of plagiarism as plagiarism was larger among China-based respondents than among Europe-based respondents. The authors conclude that biomedical researchers need clearer working definitions of plagiarism in order to deal with grey zones.
(1) Background: Caring for pregnant cancer patients is clinically and ethically complex. There is no structured ethical guidance for healthcare professionals caring for these patients. (2) Objective: ...This concept paper proposes a theoretically grounded framework to support ethical and patient-centred care of pregnant cancer patients. (3) Methodological approach: The framework development was based on ethical models applicable to cancer care during pregnancy-namely principle-based approaches (biomedical ethics principles developed by Beauchamp and Childress and the European principles in bioethics and biolaw) and relational, patient-focused approaches (relational ethics, ethics of care and medical maternalism)-and informed by a systematic review of clinical practice guidelines. (4) Results: Five foundational discussion themes, summarising the key ethical considerations that should be taken into account by healthcare professionals while discussing treatment and care options with these patients, were identified. This was further developed into a comprehensive ethics checklist that can be used during clinical appointments and highlights the need for a holistic view to patient treatment, care and counselling while providing ethical, patient-centric care. (5) Conclusion: The proposed framework was further operationalised into an ethics checklist for healthcare professionals that aims to help them anticipate and address ethical concerns that may arise when attending to pregnant cancer patients. Further studies exploring clinicians' attitudes towards cancer treatment in the course of pregnancy and patient experiences when diagnosed with cancer while pregnant and wider stakeholder engagement are needed to inform the development of further ethical, patient-centred guidance.
(1) Background: Current scientific evidence suggests that most cancers, including breast cancer, can be treated during pregnancy without compromising maternal and fetal outcomes. This, however, ...raises questions regarding the ethical implications of clinical care. (2) Methods: Using a systematic literature search, 32 clinical practice guidelines for cancer treatment during pregnancy published between 2002 and 2021 were selected for analysis and 25 of them mentioned or made references to medical ethics when offering clinical management guidance for clinicians. (3) Results: Four bioethical themes were identified: respect for patient’s autonomy, balanced approach to maternal and fetal beneficence, protection of the vulnerable and justice in resource allocation. Most guidelines recommended informing the pregnant patient about available evidence-based treatment options, offering counselling and support in the process of decision making. The relational aspect of a pregnant patient’s autonomy was also recognized and endorsed in a significant number of available guidelines. (4) Conclusions: Recognition and support of a patient’s autonomy and its relational aspects should remain an integral part of future clinical practice guidelines. Nevertheless, a more structured approach is needed when addressing existing and potential ethical issues in clinical practice guidelines for cancer treatment during pregnancy.
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