1. Research
Ethical Issues in Research

2. • Research is always based on the expectation
that researchers undertake and report their
work in the premise of fairness, honesty, and
accuracy.
A researcher who fails to fulfill these
expectations lacks the integrity and can be
accused of engaging in research misconduct.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

3. Code of conduct in research
• The guiding principle by which all research
should abide with
• Embodied in the Research Policy Manuals of
every academic and research institutions
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

4. Principle #1:
Protection from harm
• Participant should not be exposed to undue
physical and psychological harm
• Any risk involved should not be appreciably
greater than the normal risk or day-to-day
living.
• Participant should know ahead of time if some
degree of discomfort is expected.
• Debriefing and counselling should immediately
follow the research procedure.
Leedy & Ormrod, 2005

5. Principle #2:
Informed consent
• Any participation in a study should be strictly
voluntary.
• Some degree of deceit may be necessary to
validate the research. In this case, the
participant must be informed immediately
after the study is over.
• Unobstructed measure is allowed for as long as
participants are not made to do more than
their daily routine and that it is not invasive.
• Consent form required.
Leedy & Ormrod, 2005

6. Principle #3:
Right to privacy
• Strict confidentiality
• Use codes or pseudonyms to identify people
Leedy & Ormrod, 2005

7. Principle #4:
Honesty w/ professional colleagues
• Complete and honest reporting, no
misrepresentation
• Give credit where it is due
Leedy & Ormrod, 2005

8. Summary
• Principles
• Protection from harm
• Informed consent
• Right to privacy
• Honesty with professional colleague
Leedy & Ormrod, 2005

9. Internal Review Board

10. Internal Review Board
• An ethics committee reviews any research
proposal. No study can begin without the go
signal of this review board.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

11. Ethics Review
• Ethics Review Applies to:
• the design and implementation of research
involving the use of humans in research
(Human Subject Research or HSR) either as:
• subject in experiments (biomedical research)
• participants in experiments using mental exercises
(behavioral/ psychological research)
• the use of living animals as subject in
experiments (e.g. drug testing investigations
by pharmaceutical companies)
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

12. Ethics Review
• started in the medical field;
• anchored on
• Nuremberg Code (1946)
• Helsinki Declaration (1964)
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

13. 1946 Nuremberg Code
• Medical experiments by Nazis on Jews which
involved torture
• Vaccination trials in 1700’s by physicians either
using themselves or their slaves as the test
subjects.
• Dr. Edward Jenner, who first introduced smallpox
vaccines, used his son and neighbor’s kids as the
test subjects.
• The basis of the Nuremberg Code is that the
benefits of the research must outweigh the risks.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

14. Helsinki Declaration
• Developed by the World Medical Association as
a code of research ethics
• A reinterpretation of the Nuremberg Code
with an eye to medical research with
therapeutic intent
• Journal editors require that research be
performed in accordance with the Declaration,
setting the stage for the implementation of
the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process
(Shamoo & Irving 1993
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

15. Rules on Human Subject
Research (Schutt 2006)
1. Research should cause no harm to subjects, at no
point should subjects feel distressed.
2. Deception needs to be left out of the research
process, under no circumstance should a
researcher lie to their subjects.
3. Participation in research should be voluntary, and
therefore subjects must give their informed
consent to participate in the research.
4. Researchers should be very cautious when
dealing with vulnerable clients (persons who are
mentally ill, incarcerated people, or minors they
should make sure to get the proper consent).
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

16. Rules on Human Subject
Research (Schutt 2006)
5. Researchers should fully disclose their identity.
6. Anonymity or confidentiality must be maintained
for individual research participants unless it is
voluntary and explicitly waived.
7. Actively attempt to remove from the research
records any elements that might indicate the
subjects identities.
8. Finally, benefits from a research project should
outweigh any foreseeable risks.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

17. Misconduct in Research

18. Misconduct in research
• Happens during:
• Research proposal writing stage
• Conduct or performance of research
• Peer-review process of research report, or
• Reporting the research results
• Does not include honest errors or honest
differences in interpretations or judgments of
data
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

19. Misconduct in research
• At UC Berkeley, findings of research
misconduct requires that:
• There be a significant departure from accepted
practices of the relevant scientific/research
community;
• The misconduct be committed intentionally,
knowingly, or recklessly; and
• The allegation be proven by a preponderance of the
evidence
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

20. Misconduct in research
• The US National Science Foundation defines
three types of misconduct:
• Fraud or Fabrication
• Falsification
• Plagiarism
• Others may include:
• Professionally unacceptable practices in performing
research and/or reporting the results of research
• Willful failure to comply with government and other
requirements
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

21. Fraud or fabrication
• is making up data or results and recording and
reporting them
• e.g. South Korean scientist Hwang Hoo Suk’s
(born Jan. 29, 1953) claimed to have
succeeded in creating human embryonic stem
cells by cloning
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

22. Falsification
• Manipulation of research materials,
equipment, or processes, or changing or
omitting data or results such that the research
is not accurately represented in the research
record.
• Falsification is committed if there is:
• undisclosed selective reporting and rejection of
unwanted results
• manipulation of a representation or illustration
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

23. Plagiarism
• the appropriation of another person’s ideas,
processes, results, or words without giving
appropriate credit.
• the use of another’s original words or ideas as
though they were your own
• theft or misappropriation of IP and the
substantial unattributed textual copying of
another's work
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

24. “
”
“A plagiarist is ostracized by the
academic community, ridiculed
by peers, refused tenure or
awards, demonized by history”
– Isagani Cruz, linguist, columnist
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

25. Professionally unacceptable
practices
• Examples:
• research fund mishandling
• use of prohibited chemicals/drugs in experimental
research
• violating ethical standards
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

26. Willful failure to comply with
laws
• e.g. not following Ethics Review requiring the
protection of human and animal research
subjects, permits, authorization to carry out
scientific research
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

27. Other Unethical Issues
Related to Research

28. • Issue on authorship in publication – who should
be authors?
• Issue on duplicate publication
• Issue on premature release of information
about to be published
• Issue on self-citation
• Issue on data ownership (IP issue)
• Conflict of interest
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

29. Issue on authorship in publication –
who should be authors?

30. Issue on authorship in publication –
who should be authors?
• Publication must give appropriate credit to all
authors for their roles in the research.
• The decision of which names are to be listed
as co-authors should reflect the relative
contributions of various participants in the
research.
• A person's name should not be listed as author
without his or her knowledge, permission, and
review of the final version of the manuscript,
which includes the names of all co-authors.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

31. Issue on authorship in publication –
who should be authors?
• Many professional associations and research
journals have specified criteria for authorship.
One common standard followed by journals is
that each author:
• should have participated in formulating the research
problem,
• should have participated in interpreting the results,
• should have participated in writing the research
paper, and
• should be prepared to defend the publication
against criticisms.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

32. Issue on authorship in publication –
who should be authors?
• Co-authorship should be named even in oral
presentations
• Authorship entitlement should be given to a
person whether or not he/she is still at the
original location of the research when a paper
is submitted for publication.
• Honorary authors who do not meet the criteria
for authorship should be avoided.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

33. Issue on authorship in publication –
who should be authors?
• Giving technical assistance, providing research
materials or facilities, do not merit co-authorship;
credits for such must use
alternative forms of acknowledgment within
the paper such as in Acknowledgement.
• To avoid misunderstandings and even
recriminations, the inclusion and exclusion of
names of research participants as co-authors
should be made clear to all participants in the
research prior to submission of the manuscript
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

34. Issue on authorship in publication –
who should be authors?
• Order sequence of Authors’ names:
• Customs regarding the order in which co-authors'
names appear vary with the discipline. Whatever
the discipline, it is important that all co-authors
understand the basis for assigning an order of names
and should agree in advance to the assignments.
• Corresponding, or senior author – is usually the first
or last of the listed names in a multi-authored
manuscript who is designated for every paper, who
will be responsible for communicating with the
publisher
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

35. Issue on duplicate publication

36. Issue on duplicate publication
• Publishing the same article in two different
places without very good reason to do so is
inappropriate, unless appropriate citation is
made in the later publication to the earlier
one, and unless the editor is explicitly
informed.
• If there is unexplained duplication of
publication, a reader may be deceived as to
the amount of original research data.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

37. Issue on duplicate publication
• An author should not divide a research paper which
is a self-contained integral whole into a number of
smaller papers (“Chop-chop”) merely for the sake
of expanding the number of items in the author's
CV.
• Publication of two papers representing different
interpretations of the same data by different
participants in the research is confusing to
readers. The participants with differing
interpretations of the same data should attempt to
reconcile their differences in a single publication
or present their alternative interpretations in the
same paper.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

38. Issue on premature release of
information about to be published

39. Issue on premature release of
information about to be published
• It is unethical to release to the media
scientific information contained in an
accepted manuscript prior to its publication.
• An exception may be made if a public health
issue is involved and the editor agrees to an
advance release
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

40. Issue on self-citation

41. Issue on self-citation
• In citing one's own unpublished work, an
author must be careful not to imply an
unwarranted status of a manuscript.
• A paper should not be listed as “submitted”, in
anticipation of expected submission.
• A paper should not be listed as “accepted for
publication” or “In Press” unless the author
has received Galley Proof or Page Proof or has
received a letter from an editor or publisher
stating that publication has been approved,
subject perhaps only to copy-editing
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

42. Issue on data ownership (IP
issue)

43. Issue on data ownership (IP
issue)
• Research data obtained in studies performed
in the University and/or by employees of the
University are not the property of the
researcher who generated or observed them,
or even of the principal investigator of the
research group - they belong to the University,
which can be held accountable for the
integrity of the data even if the researchers
have left the University.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

44. Conflict of interest

45. Conflict of interest
• Conflicts of interest could compromise the
integrity of research or even lead to research
misconduct, Example: the distortion of
research outcomes as a result of personal
financial interests of a researcher.
• University researchers should not allow their
names to be used as “ghost” authors of
manuscripts written by commercial sponsors.
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

46. Conflict of interest
• Unless with permission by designated
University officer, in no case are University
facilities be used in the conduct of an outside
activity, and the University name and logo be
used by outside entities
• Our USC logo is now Trademark protected, its
use may require permission from USC authority
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

47. Other matters

48. Some reasons why fraudulent
acts happen:
• inadequate mentoring of researchers
• veneration of a high volume of published
research
• chases for grants
• personal glory
• political pressures for practical results
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

49. “
”
“Practicing the Code of Conduct is a
step towards promoting a culture of
research
- it starts with YOURSELF.”
“Let it flourish in your department,
and eventually to your University you
hold with high esteem !"
Danilo B. Largo, Director, USC Research Office

50. References
• Paul Leedy and Jeanne Ellis Ormrod,
PRACTICAL RESEARCH: PLANNING AND DESIGN,
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005, New Jersey
• Danilo B. Largo, Lecture Slides: CODE OF
CONDUCTS IN RESEARCH FOR SOLG, Aug. 14,
2012