Hiney (2015) relates the integrity in research as the “performance of research to the highest standards of professionalism and rigor, in an ethically robust manner”. According to the National Institutes of Health (2013), integrity in research includes “the use of honest and verifiable methods in proposing, performing, and evaluating research; reporting research results with particular attention to adherence to rules, regulations, guidelines, and following commonly accepted professional codes and norms”. So what are the consequences for patients when these rules and regulations are not adhered to?
“Patients can suffer because the treatment they receive are based on faulty or incomplete data” (Hines, 2015). Even after an article is retracted (which could take 22 to 79 months) due to false reporting, it could still have long term consequences for patients after receiving the specified treatment due to the retraction tail – having an impact beyond the retraction (Hines, 2015). So my question is, what strategies are in place to prevent such misconduct and prevent us as health care professionals from applying incorrect treatment strategies which could possibly have dire consequences for our patients?
According to Shaw & Erren (2015), there are ten simple rules for protecting research integrity:
- all papers submitted must contain contributorship statements
- all financial conflicts of interest must be reported with no time limits
- relevant, non-financial potential conflicts of interest must be declares
- trials must be reported accurately, as well as registered
- any use of metrics in research decisions must be evidence based
- all breaches of integrity guidelines should be punished or remediated
- all institutions must have clear procedures for raising concerns and protections for those who do so
- raising concerns about suspected misconduct must be mandatory
- research integrity officers must have the power to enforce integrity policies
- integrity policies must be highly visible and understood
References
Hiney, M. (2015). Research integrity: What it means, why it is important and how we might protect it. Retrieved from http://www.scienceeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Briefing_Paper_Research_Integrity_web.pdf
National Institutes of Health. (2013). What is research integrity? Retrieved from https://grants.nih.gov/grants/research_integrity/whatis.htm
Shaw, D., & Erren, T. (2015). Ten simple rules for protecting research integrity. Plos Computational Biology, 11(10). Retrieved from journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004388
2 thoughts on “Integrity in research”
Hi Janice,
I like your piece , because it really informative. I think you should consider to include your own opinions on the topic. I think you should also consider to include your reflection on clinical experience, for example did you ever used or know someone who used a treatment that they found on an article that was later retracted because of faulty data.
How will it be ensured that the rules which are protecting the integrity in research are implemented?
I think you should include retrieval dates of the online articles in your reference list.
Thank you
I enjoyed reading your piece, and it made me realize how important it is to have a research project that has good and realistic information. I focused so much on why it is important to maintain integrity in research, and I never got to the point of the kinds of consequences that are on patients.
It would have been nice if you also included your opinions on how researchers violate the integrity of research, for example, taking advantage of the vulnerable subjects and not taking into consideration of how the subjects feel, which can lead to getting false results which then affect the patients who are treated with using that faulty information retrieved from that research project. This is just an example, you can read more on this topic http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~kmacd/IDSC10/Readings/Ethics/health.pdf
I also think that you should remember to put the dates you retrieved this information just like Makadunyiswe has suggested.
This piece was an eye opener because now I know that it is important to get good results from a research project that you are conducting because physiotherapists will apply the information on patients and the treatment can be ineffective or have side effects which will reduce the dignity of the whole profession.
Thank you so much for this.