Authorship, plagiarism, preventing and resolving conflicts: Ethical issues in the research arena

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Authorship, plagiarism, preventing and resolving
conflicts Ethical issues in the research arena

• Jay Heinecke
• 9-28-2006

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Resolving Conflict

• Identify Issues before they arise
• Clear understanding of arrangements
• Collaborative studies and establishing an
  independent research program
• An ounce of prevention...

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Plagiarism?
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• Rosalind Franklin's 1952 X-ray crystallography
  picture of B-DNA.
• Watson was shown this picture by Wilkins in early
  1953.
• From the picture it was possible to calculate
     
• 1) the distance between bases (3.4A)
• 2) the length of the period (34A)
• 3) the rise of the helix (36 degrees)

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• The Double Helix A Personal Account of the
  Discovery of the Structure of DNA James D.
  Watson

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Why are issues related to authorship, plagiarism
and preventing and resolving conflicts critical
to the scientific enterprise?

• Myths
• Science is driven by the quest for knowledge
• self-less
• cooperative
• truth
• Realities
• Science is driven by scientists
• ego
• credit
• cultural relativism

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• Papers Currency of Science
• Grants
• Promotions
• Peer recognition
• Major Credit First and Last Author
• First Person who did the work
• Last Person who paid for the work
• Biological Science is Becoming Big Science

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Scenario Ethics of Resource Sharing

• Transgenic mouse project
• Graduate student
• 2 years of work
• Interesting phenotype
• Major competitor requests mouse
• How long do you wait?
• Until publication of initial paper?
• 2 years?

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Scenario Authorship Issues

• Transgenic mouse project
• graduate student project
• initial description of model published
• PI shares mouse with other investigators
• PI listed as author on paper
• graduate student is not acknowledged

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Scenario Authorship Issues

• Project
• Complex translational study
• Requires major effort
• Clinician
• Basic Scientist
• Exciting results with major findings
• Authorship?

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Scenario Authorship Issues

• Project
• Post-doc 1 begins project
• Makes initial key observations
• Follow-up
• Post-doc 1 leaves to become faculty
• Post-doc 2 spends two years finishing paper
• Authorship?

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Scenario Authorship Issues

• Paper
• Post-doc 1 makes significant contribution
• Data included in original submission of paper
• Review
• Reviewer hates data of Post-doc 1
• Results removed from revised paper
• Authorship?

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Resolving Conflict

• Identify Issues
• Design Options
• Cooperative Response
• Manage Emotions
• Willingness to Resolve
• Negotiate
• Mediation
• Broaden Perspectives

THE CONFLICT RESOLUTION NETWORK crnhq.org/
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Fraud?

• Two different figures
• Lab meeting note wide range of data points
• Results convincing
• Paper less convincing points removed from
  figure
• Conclusion not changed
• What do you do?

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Fraud?

• the Representative Micrograph
• in other words the best result you got

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Fraud?

• Issues
• Cultural relativism
• Be prepared to defend your stand in public
• When in doubt, consult a colleague
• Approaches
• Cut and run
• Defend the truth
• Consequences
• Destruction of scientific careers
• Maintain your perspective
• Science is self correcting

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Data Manipulation

• Immunoblot analysis
• Photoshop manipulation
• Enhance bands
• Edit out smears
• Combine lanes from different regions of gel
• Combine lanes from different gels
• Fraud or part of scientific process?

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Rockefeller University Journals

• Routinely check images for manipulation
• All images must be
• Originals
• Non-manipulated
• Dates of image acquisition must match date of
  experiment

Ushma SN. Stop misbehaving! J. Clin. Invest.,
Jul 2006 116 1740 - 1741.
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Who Owns the Idea?
Laboratory Long history of interest in DNA
repair Post-doc Discovers a new repair
enzyme Publishes seminal article Post-doc
becomes a junior faculty member at another
institution Who owns the project?
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Conflict of Interest?
Drug company talks Financial interest in
product diagnostic test therapeutic
intervention Want to crush the senior author of
the paper
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Resolving Conflict

• Identify Issues before they arise
• Clear understanding of arrangements
• Collaborative studies and establishing an
  independent research program
• An ounce of prevention...
• Maintain your perspective
• Science is a marathon, not a sprint