The Ethical Conduct of Research

Planning Research

Institutional Review Board (IRB) forms:

You need to turn in two forms to the IRB: a cover sheet and a research summary.

Request for IRB Review (cover sheet, printer version) This is the version that is online at the Office of Scientific Research. Each line of text is "centered" and there are lines for filling in the information. This form works well if you want to print it and fill in the infomation by hand. There are a couple of major problems you will encounter if you try to edit this version with a word processor. First, when you enter information you will break the lines were you enter the text, that is, your text will not be underlined. Second, the line will center itself as you add infomation, destroying the appearance of the form.

Request for IRB Review (cover sheet, MS Word 95, 97 version, html). This version removes the lines and left justifies the text. You can download the file, read it with MS Word 97 (and Word 95?), and enter your text using the work processor.

Research Summary (html version). You can download this file and edit it with MS Word 97 (and Word 95?).

If it would be helpful I could add "rich text" versions of each of these files that could be downloaded and read by nearly any word processor. Let me know.

IRB Policy Statement:

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Institutional Review Board (IRB)
Policy and Procedures on Research Involving Human Subjects:
http://www.uccs.edu/~osr/gentable/human.html#sr

Informed Consent

Jewish Cronic Disease Hospital (July, 1963)

Tuskegee Institute syphilis studies (1932 to 1972)

Wichita Jury Recording (1954)

Taxi Cab Study (1967)

Informed consent with children

Avoiding Harm

Army stress studies (1950's)

CIA research on psychotropic drugs (1970's)

Zimbardo Prison Study (1972)

Deception & Debriefing

Social psychology (1950-1980)

Milgrams research on obedience (1960's)

Immediate vs. delayed debriefing.

Confidentiality

Research data is not "priviledged" information!

Offering Inducements

Financial inducements and institutionalized participants.

Workplace inducements

Biohazard research example

Honoring Commitments

Promises of reward.

Promises of information at the completion of the study.

Minimizing Invasiveness

Scientific Fraud

I have available an annotated bibliography of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct. See me if you want a copy.

Keith-Speigel, P., Aronson, K., Bowman, M. (1994). Scientific misconduct: An annotated Bibiolgraphy. Unpublished Manuscript, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306.

e.g.,

Holden, C. (1987). NIMH finds a case of serious misconduct. Science, 235, 1566-1567.

"The author outlines the charges of misconduct against Dr. Stephen Breuning, a psychologist who researched the uses of psychoactive drugs with the mentally retarded. Charges included inventing raw data and publishing results from experiments which were never run. The failure of two universities to aggressively investigate Dr. Breuning, even though he had shown a pattern of questionable behavior, is disussed. The results published by Breuning were utilized in social policy making which is one of hte primary dangers in unethical research."

Wong, P. T. (1981). Implicit editorial policies and the integrity of psychology as an empirical science. American Psychologist, 690, 692.

"The author suggests that editorial practices may encourage data fraud and impede its detection. Publishers' resistance to negative criticism decreases the reporting of failed replications. Also, sound studies are often not considered for publication if the manuscript is submitted with even one grammatical error. Lastly, views that are contradictory to the latest fad are often dismissed and are not published. All these factors hinder the development of science."

Publication Issues

If you are interested in this issue you should read Fine and Kurdek's (1993) paper. They present some case histories and some guidelines for making these decisions.

Fine, M. A., & Kurdek, L. A. (1993). Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations. American Psychologist, 48, 1141-1147.

Sharing Data

Professional Reviewers

Resolving Ethical Issues

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-revised 05/26/99