VCU on research team receiving NIH grant to shed light on standards of scientific conduct

By Sathya Achia Abraham

Virginia Commonwealth University is part of a research team that received a National Institutes of Health grant to explore common practices of scientists when conducting research, their views of ideal standards and how they may vary among different research disciplines.

The lead institution in the study is the University of California, San Diego. Both VCU and the University of Pennsylvania will play major collaborative roles in the work. Investigators at Vanderbilt, Northern Illinois University and California State University will also be involved in the research. The grant totals nearly $479,000.

The findings will help improve the curriculum taught to university researchers and students about the standards of responsible conduct in research.

“This research will provide a foundation for understanding the views of responsible conduct in research on a broad scale. This will help us assess teaching effectiveness and suggest strategies to improve responsible conduct in research education and training,” said co-investigator, Francis Macrina, Ph.D., VCU’s vice president for research.

To gather data, Macrina, together with co-investigator David Urban, Ph.D., a marketing professor in the VCU School of Business, will poll active research scientists about standards in data management, collaboration and authorship through focus group discussions, interviews and a survey. Additionally, the variation of standards within research disciplines and differences between disciplines will be identified.

Currently, there is little empirical research that has addressed the common practices of scientists with regard to responsible conduct in research, or RCR.

In 1989, government officials mandated that ethics of science research be taught in U.S. universities to ensure that scientists have a foundation for making decisions in situations that present ethical dilemmas. When a mandate went into effect requiring anyone supported by a predoctoral or postdoctoral training grant to take RCR programs, Macrina was already teaching it.

Macrina had been conducting seminars at VCU since the mid-1980s on research “manners and methods” and turned the series into a course, “Scientific Integrity,” which made its curriculum debut at VCU in 1991. He then combined all the material he had gathered to teach the developing course and turned it into one of the most widely used textbooks in the country, Scientific Integrity, now in its third edition.

Common areas where ethical dilemmas might arise include conflict of interest, responsible authorship, the use of human and animal test subjects and data management. 

The principal investigator on the project is Michael Kalichman, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Diego.