These cases and commentaries result from a series of workshops on Graduate Research Ethics Education, held at Indiana University, Bloomington, from 1996 to 2000. The project brought together many graduate and post-doctoral students in the natural sciences for a study of research ethics and reflects the experiences and problems they face. The project was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant No. SBR 9421897) to the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE); The Office of Research, University Graduate School, and Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions all at Indiana University.
These scenarios are part of a modular sequence of materials on the responsible conduct of research that support group activities for student-faculty learning. Topics include, Data handling, Research with Animals and Vulnerable Human Subjects (children, mentally ill), Editing and Reviewing, and Authorship.
These scenarios and discussion questions are based upon cases reviewed by the Board of Ethical Review (BER) for the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). The NSPE BER reviews cases with the specific purpose of making an ethical judgment on the actions of (only) the engineers in the cases, based solely on the NSPE Code of Ethics. The Board's original statement of the case and its judgment on it are linked to each case statement.
These are studies that raise issues of research ethics. Three examples from a larger collection raise ethical issues of: the deception of experimental subjects, the limits on risks and suffering to which patient subjects should be subjected in studies of treatment efficacy, and the constraints on the treatment of higher animals in the quest for new information about brain function.
A very few of the abstracts of published articles about cases of misconduct from Robert Sprague's collection of cases. The articles are listed according to the kind of scientific misconduct they are about.
These scenarios and role plays present problems in research ethics common in a medical school setting. The problems range from those of acknowledging help and keeping research records, to those of conflicting priorities among members of a laboratory and the responsibilities of faculty advisory committees.