This section of the course will satisfy the requirements of the Scholarship and Research Integrity (SARI) program, covering responsible conduct of research (RCR) issues, such as: the acquisition, management, sharing, and ownership of data; publication practices and responsible authorship; conflicts of interest and commitment; research misconduct (falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism); peer review; collaborative science; mentor/trainee responsibilities; human subjects protections; and animal welfare.
This lesson will take us one week to complete. Please refer to the Course Syllabus for specific time frames and due dates. Specific directions for the assignment below can be found within this lesson.
Requirements | Assignment Details |
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To Do | Read and familiarize yourself with all the Lesson 2 materials. |
Read | Week 2:
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Assignment | Week 2:
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If you have any questions, please post them to our Questions? discussion forum (not email), located under the Discussions tab in Canvas. I will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
Scholarship and Research Integrity (SARI) program here at Penn State is an initiative for enriching and expanding education and support for issues facing graduate researchers in every field.
"Penn State is committed to modeling, teaching and promoting responsible conduct of research and scholarship within the University community. All scholars, from graduate students to senior investigators, confront ethical issues in their professions. The issues that require attention are constantly changing. While advances in technology and the ability to interact with colleagues across the globe have opened up vast opportunities for advancement, they have also created new challenges for the responsible conduct of research and scholarship.
Advance discussion of core principles and possible scenarios can help inform choices frequently made under pressure, helping to eliminate poor decisions. Penn State recognizes that we have a unique opportunity —and a responsibility—to address these issues in a proactive and deliberate manner."
The core principles of research integrity concern the avoidance of research fraud. Research fraud can be perpetrated in at least three main ways, namely through the falsification of the research record, the fabrication of data in the research record, and/or plagiarism (the representation of other(s) work without reference as your own). All three of these infractions of research integrity can have damaging results to individuals, even leading to wrongful death in some cases. Further, such situations can corrode overall public trust of scientific research itself, including research institutions.
A familiar scene of falsification of evidence can found while watching a courtroom television drama, where a law enforcement officer is portrayed as having tainted key evidence during the process of investigation and the suspect on trial is let go, even if the suspect may be guilty. Why does this happen? Why should someone, possibly a criminal, be let go because a piece of evidence was falsified, even if the rest of the evidence was not changed? The reasoning is that any conclusions based on or influenced by the falsified evidence cannot be sustained. Further, falsified evidence brings the validity of all of the other evidence in the case into question as well.
A article from the news illustrates the point: "In her order, [the Judge] -- a former prosecutor -- issued a scathing indictment of the prosecutor in that case for hiding evidence that [the murdered] was allegedly, a sexual predator who had molested [the murderer] and other children. [The Judge] said "evidence has plainly been suppressed," and accused former assistant D.A. of engaging in "gamesmanship" and "playing fast and loose." The judge also said [the prosecutor] "had no problem disregarding her ethical obligations" in an attempt to win."
Another way evidence can be falsified is if it is withheld, particularly if it demonstrates a counter argument, such as DNA evidence demonstrating the innocence of a suspect. If this data is available, but withheld, then it is also a form of falsification or misrepresentation of the available data. There are many similar analogies about falsification in law that also carry over to issues about falsification of data in science, engineering, economics, etc. While what ultimately constitutes proof and certainty in a court of law ("beyond the shadow of a doubt") is not the same that constitutes proof or certainty in science (>95%), the impacts and problems of falsification are very similar.
Falsification in sciences and engineering arise from manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that research observations are not accurately represented in the research record. Falsification often occurs when a researcher chooses to omit data that goes against confirming a hypothesis, such as omitting to report harmful, but rarely observed, side-effects in Phase 1 or 3 trials of testing a new medication. In this context, falsification of data can lead directly to harming individuals who later take the medication.
Other forms of falsification not of the research ethics kind: There are times when data may be false for reasons of instrumental calibration, such as the recent example of the particles that were thought to be traveling faster than the speed of light, when later it turned out to be instrumental calibration issues. This particular issue does not constitute falsification.There is another notion of falsification in the sciences that should not be confused with the falsification of research data, namely, the falsification of a hypothesis. This simply means that a scientific hypothesis has been demonstrated to be logically false based on existing data.
There is an Aesop's Fable you may be familiar with, titled The Boy Who Cried Wolf, about a shepherd boy who shouts out to the local villagers that a wolf was attacking his flock, but when the villagers rushed to the scene, there was no wolf to be found. The boy did this multiple times, and each time, there was no wolf to be found. When a wolf actually did come to attack the boy's flock, the villagers had ignored the cries, thinking that it was a false alarm, and the boy's flock was destroyed by the wolf. The moral of this story is, at its root, about how being caught fabricating observations, in this case about a wolf, will inevitably lead to an erosion of trust in other claims.
Fabrication is making up data or results and recording them in the research record. Fabrication in research typically concerns the construction of data to fit or conform to a given test or confirm a particular hypothesis. Fabrication is no small issue in the sciences, and publishing work or releasing medicines based on fabricated results can bring big rewards. There exist numerous examples of fabrication in science, medicine, and engineering, many of which likely go undetected.
"Biomedical research has become a winner-take-all game — one with perverse incentives that entice scientists to cut corners and, in some instances, falsify data or commit other acts of misconduct," says senior author Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
The study reviewed 2,047 papers retracted from the biomedical literature through May 2012 and consulted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research Integrity and Retractionwatch.com to establish the cause.
And the team found that about 21 percent of the retractions were attributable to error, while 67 percent were due to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43 percent), duplicate publication (14 percent), and plagiarism (10 percent). Miscellaneous or unknown reasons accounted for the remaining 12 percent.
"What's troubling is that the more skillful the fraud, the less likely that it will be discovered, so there likely are more fraudulent papers out there that haven't yet been detected and retracted," says Casadevall.
Perhaps you are working on writing a paper for a class and are on a serious deadline, plus you have to study for two midterms, and you have caught a cold, so are not feeling your best. While working on the paper, you decide you can save time writing by cutting and pasting large parts of supporting text from a rather obscure website (it was, after all, three pages into a web search.) You reason that the passages you cut-and-paste are quite appropriate to what you are trying to convey, and that it would be rather difficult to improve on what the author already wrote. Being rushed for time, you also "forget to quote" and/or properly cite the material you pasted into the paper. Upon grading the paper, the instructor catches your shortcut and has a meeting with you about this problem. You are informed by the instructor that this kind of shortcutting is called plagiarism and that you are going to receive an F for the course and a mark on your school record. You realize that this is rather problematic, and could even impact your ability to receive student loans. Then, you think that this seems rather harsh for such a minor infraction. Equally, you wonder, why would the penalty for copying answers on a test be met with equally harsh consequences? (Do some pullout work here on ethics spotting. Why do you think that there are ethical issues with copying work? Does it cause harm?)
How eager would you be to take a medicine for an ailment if you were not at all sure if either the medicine would work on your ailment – or if the side-effects of the medication were worse than the disease? How confident would you be in someone you never met saying that they "have your best interests" in mind when making decisions for you, such as ? On one hand, new medicines could not be brought to market if no one was willing to take part in early trials of the medicine. On the other hand, not many people would be eager to be among the first to test out a new drug for an ailment or life-threatening disease, unless the alternatives were definitively worse. Research is often conducted on humans, animals, living systems, and environments in ways that could impact the well-being (positively and negatively) of those subjects of research. Important ethical questions arise when we begin to ask how much those subjects know about the risks of partaking in specific research or how a specific intervention may impact their health. Further, ethical problems are compounded when the subject(s) of research or decision-making cannot speak or make decisions for themselves, such as for an unconscious patient on life support, or even for non-human subjects, like animals, plants, and ecosystems. The main ethical question that arises is whether a subject or stakeholder is able to consent to participating in research and/or decision-making, or what is referred to as "informed consent."
Having the capacity to give consent to being part of research, receiving a medical treatment with known risks (like surgery), and/or having decisions (including policies) about your welfare made on your behalf requires the ability to consent and be informed (and understand that information) well enough to make a well-grounded decision. The idea of informed consent, however, is only applied to humans who can consent. While consent cannot be given by animals, ecosystems, and other non-human subjects, the idea of consent is implicit in trying to come to a decision about the minimization of harms. This consideration of the well-being of non-human subjects unable to consent would widely apply, from animals in a laboratory setting to aquifers in a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) zone, and are typically taken into consideration through existing regulatory processes (such as the Institutional Review Board or Environmental Impact Assessments.)
The main concept to keep in mind here is the idea of consent, whether it be informed consent of a patient or research subject, or a form of representative consent, where a person or organization stands in for the concerns of the non-human subject(s) undergoing research or significant changes.
Each research institution which is able to receive grants from the U.S. Government for human and/or animal research is required to have an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that reviews proposals to assure the protection of research subjects. Examples of and reasons for requiring review of research that involves human subjects are numerous and multiple throughout medical and behavioral research. (History is full of horror stories about the treatment of medical and behavioral research subjects.)
While it may not be bio-medical research, if we are to learn what we can about the many social and behavioral aspects of renewable energy and sustainability systems, we will need to research topics such as patterns of consumption, energy use, patterns of traffic flow, individual psychology, response to risks, etc. Behavioral and social requires the study of research subjects, which will require a review of the research by the institution's own IRB.
Penn State has very extensive Institutional Review Board (IRB) resources as part of the Office for Research Protections (which all research falls under.) This lesson is in no way a replacement for the extensive educational resources and regulatory support. See the following resources for more: Penn State's Institutional Review Board [9] and Penn State's Office for Research Protections [10].
The treatment of research subjects and medical patients can be approached through a basic principle (easy in theory, but not in practice) that subjects ought to be treated how they want to be treated. The difficult part can be in determining whether subjects understand the risks of the procedure or research in which they are partaking. Further, protecting the identity of information and research data about a subject is required (privacy and confidentiality) if no harm comes to the subject from the information generated by the research (such as a pre-existing condition or genetic marker for a specific disease). Subjects that are experiencing conditions that could compromise or coerce subjects into agreeing to research or treatments that may not be in their best interests.
From 1850 to 1920, roughly 85% of the old-growth forests in the United States were cut down. Much of this lumber fed the early iron and steel mills and resulted in the industrial expansion of the United States, and many of these areas have since been reforested. Nevertheless, this expansion impacted or even eradicated the landscapes and ecosystems of many different species. Further, this exact pattern of rapid deforestation has been occurring in the Amazon rainforest since 1972, beginning with the building of interior highways. (By 2013, approximately 800,000 km2 of rainforest will have been cleared since 1970, roughly the size of France and Italy combined.) The loss of respiration from the trees (keeping humidity in the region constant) has resulted in multiple problems in the Amazon river basin, from extreme flooding to droughts. How do we being to judge the loss of such services that the rainforest itself provides? How do we clearly compare the costs of the loss of such ecological services, such as clean water and protection from floods, to the financial benefits and economic developments such activities bring with them?
Environmental and ecological systems can be significantly impacted by human intervention. Animals, plants, schools of fish, even entire ecosystems are impacted by human consumption patterns, particularly in the history of energy production. Animals, particularly mice, are continually used to test new drugs, the toxicity of chemical compounds, the potential for cancer from exposure, etc. Further, animals are designed to produce necessary human medicines, such as insulin from pigs, or now even organs in sheep grown with human tissue (20% by genetics) to decrease the chances of organ transplant rejections, and bacteria are being designed to produce ponds of biofuels.
As discussed previously, we can do our best to ensure human subjects and patients are able to consent to take part in research or a medical procedure, or someone who may represent their best interests can typically speak for that person's wishes (such as towards the end of life, when a person may be impaired). However, thinking about consent for something like a lab mouse or a landscape does not make sense. How would a lab mouse want to be treated? (Probably not how most of them are treated.) Is it right to introduce engineered genetics into the environment that could breed into native species of plants, changing the inherited genetic structure of the plant forever, such as genetically modifying corn engineered for biofuels?
For human subjects research, the Office for Research Protections (ORP) requires research to be approved through the Institutional Review Board (IRB). For animal subjects research, the ORP requires review by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). For environmental based research, such as for biofuels, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is typically conducted on the part of the researcher. (Check to see here if there is a review board for this.) Regardless, procedures for assessing environmental factors need to be significantly improved, particularly under the principles and goals of sustainability.
Source: Committee for the Update of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (2010). Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, Eighth Edition.
Source: Based on the United Nations Environment Programme: Abaza, H., Bisset, R., & Sadler, B. (2004). Environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment: towards an integrated approach. Geneva, UNEP.
A stakeholder is an entity which has a specific interest in the outcomes of a given action, such as a project or change in policy. 'Entities' here can refer to individual citizens, organizations, business, groups of people, systems, ecosystems, or even members of future generations. To have a stake in something means to be in some manner or another impacted by the outcomes of the action proposed or completed. Precisely who or what all the stakeholders are in a given action is not necessarily clear before the action is completed and an impact analysis conducted. Nevertheless, there is an obligation based on principles of basic social justice and democratic processes to determine what the impacts of a given action could possibly be and to whom or what.
An action can have a wide variety of impacts. However, those impacts depend on the standpoint of the stakeholder. One stakeholder may have received a very good deal out of the action while for the other stakeholder the outcome was negative. For example, say you have a small house in the woods by a stream which you use to drink and water your garden with on dry days, the excess from which you make a small bit of money. Along comes a gold prospector who, now living up the stream from you, decides to dam the stream up in the search for gold. You now only have access to a small trickle of the water you just had access to the day before. (What would you do?) Obviously, the outcomes of a given action are rather different depending on the stakeholder's standpoint. (Not all outcomes have to be so stark in comparison.) We might call these two individuals primary stakeholders, while those benefiting from the prospector's gold and those who may not be able to any longer purchase the farmer's vegetables may be referred to here as secondary stakeholders. Those individuals who would able to go in and require the prospector to dismantle or at least minimize the impact of the gold mining operation would be referred to here as key stakeholders, who hold power over the outcomes of the action but may or may not be impacted by the action.
Some stakeholders are not able to represent their interests during a consideration of impacts, for example, an endangered environment, ecosystem, or species is obviously not able to represent 'its' interests in human decision-making processes. As such, these kinds of stakeholders require representative proxies for their interests, which often come in the form of special interest NGOs. There are also many groups of individuals (humans) that are unable to properly enter into the decision-making process for reasons of gender, race, class, economic status, social status, or otherwise. Assuring that outcomes and impacts of actions do not adversely affect those stakeholders that cannot represent themselves requires a comprehensive stakeholder analysis and includes representations of those interested that cannot readily represent themselves. Why is this necessary? Because the dominant financial and political forces will almost always work in their own best interests, leverage what power they have. This is, in fact, the crucial difference between stakeholder in an action and shareholder in a company.
The product of a well-conducted stakeholder analysis ought to produce a shared balance of benefits/burdens from a given action and, foremost, not impact those in a weak position or otherwise unable to represent their own interests. A fair process requires the consideration of possible impacts to the primary stakeholders, secondary stakeholders, and key stakeholders. Basic procedural fairness usually necessitates a partially to completely open process where stakeholders are able to give light to their perspective on the impacts from the initial conception of the action. A stakeholder analysis is likely to produce the best results (perceived as fair) when conducted early on in the process of deliberation around a decision or action so engagement with all interested stakeholders can begin. The stakeholder analysis process is a mapping out of people, groups, or systems that hold a stake in the outcome of the action. Initially, a stakeholder analysis can be done by theoretically mapping out the possible impacts on stakeholders of a given decision or action. Mapping out in a real process requires direct representation from the members of the group, i.e., as effective as it may be, it is improper to assume a stakeholder's standpoint is a given. Taking our previous example of the gold prospector and the gardener, it would probably be improper and incorrect for the prospector to assume that if the gardener minded the loss of streamflow, his land could be purchased for a good sum of money.
A significant motivating factor for conducting research and moving it forward is receiving credit for the research and findings. Credit is given to those who play a significant role in shaping the research and/or interpretation of results. Authorship, either of papers, project proposals, architectural plans, etc., is a primary aspect of the distribution of one's work and a necessary aspect of moving a career forward in many fields. In academic research settings, authorship and credit provide the foundations by which a researcher is evaluated. The more prestigious the journal is, the higher the impact the research is likely to be perceived to have, the more prestige the researcher. In business and policy planning, credit and acknowledgment can depend on and be evaluated based more on team and leadership performance than in academic settings. Regardless of the context, "credit where credit is due" seems an apt phrase to describe what it takes to move a career forward.
Acknowledgment comes in many forms, again, depending on the context. In a commercial environment, acknowledgment may take the form of upholding patents, which may be licensed and put to use in other products. In an academic environment, acknowledgment comes in the form of citing previous works and findings upon which the current research is based. In a laboratory environment, acknowledgment may come in the form of providing credit to technicians either through co-authorship or in an acknowledgments section. Acknowledgment sections of books often cite specific examples of how certain individuals helped to shape the author's thinking around a particular point.
"The reward individual scientists seek is credit. That is, they seek recognition, to have their work cited as important and as necessary to further scientific progress. The scientific community seeks true theories or adequate models. Credit, or recognition, accrues to individuals to the extent they are perceived as having contributed to that community goal. Without strong community policing structures, there is a strong incentive to cheat, to try to obtain credit without necessarily having done the work. Communities and individuals are then faced with the question: when is it appropriate to trust and when not?"
Longino, Helen, "The Social Dimensions of Scientific Knowledge [19]," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/scientific-knowledge-social/>.
Authorship of a publication implies both taking credit as well as responsibility for what is published. This can sometimes be a challenge in interdisciplinary or large team contexts, where trust in others' work is an established necessity. Even though most fields and even different labs will have slightly, if not completely, different standards for deciding on the order of authorship, what constitutes a viable contribution is fairly similar across fields.
"The list of authors establishes accountability as well as credit. When a paper is found to contain errors, whether caused by mistakes or deceit, authors might wish to disavow responsibility, saying that they were not involved in the part of the paper containing the errors or that they had very little to do with the paper in general. However, an author who is willing to take credit for a paper must also bear responsibility for its errors or explain why he or she had no professional responsibility for the material in question."
(pg. 37) National Research Council. On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research: Third Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2009.
John Hardwig (1985) articulated one philosophical dilemma posed by such large teams of researchers. Each member or subgroup participating in such a project is required because each has a crucial bit of expertise not possessed by any other member or subgroup. This may be knowledge of a part of the instrumentation, the ability to perform a certain kind of calculation, the ability to make a certain kind of measurement or observation. The other members are not in a position to evaluate the results of other members' work, and hence, all must take one anothers' results on trust. The consequence is an experimental result, (for example, the measurement of a property such as the decay rate or spin of a given particle) the evidence for which is not fully understood by any single participant in the experiment."
Agree on the order of authorship beforehand, if at all possible. Sometimes authors get pulled into a publication later in the process, but even then some agreement on the order of authorship ought to be arrived at before sending off a manuscript for review.
Contribution. Authorship is generally limited to individuals who make significant contributions to the work that is reported. This includes anyone who:
Steneck, Nicholas H. 2007. ORI Introduction to the Responsible Conduct of Research [20]. [Rockville, Md.]: Dept. of Health and Human Services.
When credit as a co-author is not appropriate for a given publication, extended collaborators and external advisors will often be given credit in an acknowledgment section, usually at the beginning of a paper and at the end of a book. Robert Day provides a helpful description here which provides some excellent rules of thumb for how to approach an acknowledgments section in a publication. These rules of thumb are proper to consider for a variety of contexts which require extending the social courtesy of acknowledging the contribution of another's input.
First, you should acknowledge any significant technical help that you received from any individual, whether in your laboratory or elsewhere. You should also acknowledge the source of special equipment, cultures, or other materials. You might, for example, say something like "Thanks are due to J. Jones for assistance with the experiments and to R. Smith for valuable discussion."
Second, it is usually in the Acknowledgments wherein you should acknowledge any outside financial assistance, such as grants, contracts, or fellowships.
A word of caution is in order. Often, it is wise to show the proposed wording of the Acknowledgment to the person whose help you are acknowledging. He or she might well believe that your acknowledgment is insufficient or (worse) that it is too effusive. If you have been working so closely with an individual that you borrowed either equipment or ideas, that person is most likely to be a friend or a valued colleague. It would be silly to risk either your friendship or the opportunities for future collaboration by placing in public print a thoughtless word that might be offensive. An inappropriate thank you can be worse than none at all, and if you value the advice and help of friends and colleagues, you should be careful to thank them in a way that pleases rather than displeases.
Furthermore, if your acknowledgment relates to an idea, suggestion, or interpretation, be very specific about it. If your colleague’s input is too broadly stated, he or she could well be placed in the sensitive and embarrassing position of having to defend the entire paper. Certainly, if your colleague is not a coauthor, you make them a responsible party to the basic considerations treated in your paper. Indeed, your colleague may not agree with some of your central points, and it is not good science and not good ethics for you to phrase the Acknowledgments in a way that seemingly denotes endorsement." Day, Robert. “How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper: 5th Edition” Oryx Press, 1998.
Remember, there is nothing really scientific about the Acknowledgments section, it is simply about courtesy.
The motivation for credit and acknowledgment is a significant driver behind the push to publish or patent from research. With rapid communications that support the dissemination of research, new findings can propagate quickly. Digital communications combined with increasingly competitive environments create further pressure to disseminate findings quickly. In circumstances of urgency, such as with an infectious disease, timing is critical, but so is accuracy in data and interpretation. In most cases, research and development occurs within a predictable cycle, perhaps dictated in the terms of the grant or business cycle. Research findings ought to be submitted in a timely manner and, for federally funded research, made available along with the data. Different funders have different expectations for what to do with findings. For companies, much is often not shared due to what they may argue is protection of trade secrets, which makes it more difficult to review certain claims.
Submitting research findings for peer review is one way journals and researchers check the work of their colleagues. While the peer review process is a quality check of the work, it is not a foolproof process, and errors can get through. For multidisciplinary teams, the lead author may not be able to evaluate the validity of certain sections of a paper, in which case the lead author ought to find a colleague capable of giving feedback on such content.
"Investigators are expected to promptly prepare and submit for publication, with authorship that accurately reflects the contributions of those involved, all significant findings from work conducted under NSF grants. Grantees are expected to permit and encourage such publication by those actually performing that work, unless a grantee intends to publish or disseminate such findings itself.... Investigators are expected to share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work under NSF grants. Grantees are expected to encourage and facilitate such sharing. Privileged or confidential information should be released only in a form that protects the privacy of individuals and subjects involved. General adjustments and, where essential, exceptions to this sharing expectation may be specified by the funding NSF Program or Division/Office for a particular field or discipline to safeguard the rights of individuals and subjects, the validity of results, or the integrity of collections or to accommodate the legitimate interest of investigators."
National Science Foundation Award and Administration Guide [21]
A conflict of interest can arise when there are competing interests in a particular project or line of research that hinder the capacity for clear judgment and unbiased analysis. We want to avoid conflicts of interest to avoid social favoritism (cronyism and nepotism), the preference of familiar people and things (the mere-exposure effect), favoritism towards funding sources (funding outcome biases), bias in review of other projects based on competing interests, self-favoritism (egotism), internal review (self-policing), etc. Bribery, described in further detail below, presents an immediate conflict of interest.
Bribery means to take or offer something in exchange for favoritism. Bribery presents a very immediate and obvious conflict of interest that requires a “gift” in exchange for preferential treatment. These kinds of “gifts” can come in various forms, such as kickbacks for accepting a bid; money, goods, services, or favors for “looking the other way”; use of information to blackmail someone; using knowledge for personal financial gain, such as insider trading; and use of position of authority for personal gain, particularly in government-related positions.
Gifts and bribery do not always come in the form of money or forms of obvious payment. Basically, if you would not feel comfortable in people knowing about the transaction or favor, then it is probably not a good idea to engage in the exchange.
Disclosure is the primary means for addressing possible conflicts of interest, for similar reasons to those in our disclosure to Subjects and Stakeholders (Lesson 2, Part 2 [25]). It might be obvious to state that the easiest way to avoid COIs is to be able to know about them in advance. This is why identifying and disclosing known COIs is the best way to avoid the mistrust that may come from them. In other words, information and access to that information about possible conflicts of interests is still the best way to avoid them.
The external perception of a conflict of interest, even if it feels as though none exists, is enough to put projects, CEOs, and/or entire companies at risk. Integrity is typically based on a person or company’s record for avoiding conflicts of interest and in “fair dealings.”
Penn State, like most major research universities, has an extensive COI policy. For the full policy and requirements for individual reporting, you can read through Penn State's Research Administration Policies Research Protections [26]. All researchers receiving federal funds must report any possible financial conflicts of interest at least once per year, and within thirty days if one does arise. Penn State defines the purpose of the policy as the following:
"The purpose of this Policy is to maintain the objectivity and integrity of Research at The Pennsylvania State University (the “University”) and to ensure transparency in relationships with outside Entities and individuals as they relate to the academic and scholarly mission of the University. Among its many missions, the University seeks to foster interactions between the private sector and academia, as interdisciplinary and translational research is of ever-increasing importance in transforming newfound knowledge into useable technologies and scholarship that benefit the public. There is, however, the potential for financial conflicts of interest in such collaborations. In most cases those conflicts can be managed appropriately, rather than eliminated, thereby enabling those involved in University Research to engage in that Research objectively and with integrity and at the same time maintain acceptable financial relationships with outside Entities and individuals. Disclosure of financial interests to the University will protect both investigators and Penn State from potential criticism or even government sanctions in the event such relationships are subsequently called into question."
As you will see in the following example, corporations also have a significant interest in keeping conflicts of interest from occurring.
Let us look at what the company ArcelorMittal defines as conflicts of interest in its Code of Business Conduct [27].
ArcelorMittal recognizes that we all have our own individual interests and encourages the development of these interests, especially where they are beneficial to the community at large.
However, we must always act in the best interests of the Company, and we must avoid any situation where our personal interests conflict or could conflict with our obligations toward the Company.
As employees, we must not acquire any financial or other interest in any business or participate in any activity that could deprive the Company of the time or the scrupulous attention we need to devote to the performance of our duties.
We must not, directly or through any members of our families or persons living with us or with whom we are associated, or in any other manner:
We must inform our supervisor or the Legal Department of any business or financial interests that could be seen as conflicting or possibly conflicting with the performance of our duties. If the supervisor considers that such a conflict of interest exists or could exist, he or she is to take the steps that are warranted in the circumstances. If the case is complex, the supervisor is to bring it to the attention of the Vice-President of his or her division, the Chief Executive Officer or the General Counsel.
We must not profit from our position with ArcelorMittal so as to derive personal benefits conferred on us by persons who deal or seek to deal with the Company. Consequently, accepting any personal benefit, such as a sum of money, a gift, a loan, services, pleasure trips or vacations, special privileges or living accommodations or lodgings, with the exception of promotional items of little value, is forbidden.
Any entertainment accepted must also be of a modest nature, and the real aim of the entertainment must be to facilitate the achievement of business objectives. For example, if tickets for a sporting or cultural event are offered to us, the person offering the tickets must also plan to attend the event. In general, offers of entertainment in the form of meals and drinks may be accepted, provided that they are inexpensive, infrequent, and, as much as possible, reciprocal.
As these instructions cannot cover every eventuality, we are all required to exercise good judgment. The saying «everybody does it» is not a sufficient justification. If we are having difficulty deciding whether a particular gift or entertainment falls within the boundaries of acceptable business practice, we should ask ourselves the following questions:
Is it directly related to the conduct of business? Is it inexpensive, reasonable, and in good taste? Would I be comfortable telling other customers and suppliers that I gave or received this gift? Other employees? My supervisor? My family? The media? Would I feel obligated to grant favours in return for this gift? Am I sure the gift does not violate a law or a Company policy?
In case of continuing doubt, we should consult our Supervisor or the Legal Department.
Links
[1] https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-green-leafed-plant-2280551/
[2] https://www.pexels.com/@chokniti-khongchum-1197604
[3] http://www.pexel.com
[4] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/
[5] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Boycriedwolfbarlow.jpg
[6] http://wikimedia.org
[7] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rat_eating_or_praying%3F.jpg
[8] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
[9] http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/humans
[10] http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/
[11] https://www.flickr.com/photos/crustmania/10094847976/in/photolist-go3JB3-Dy7rvW-W79rmd-p6NLu6-nWmkGq-iF2aod-5Yk5gW-2dDHmC4-4Kn6Hj-69WTrL-63tKee-CmXSW-d9PMY5-24ptLVp-4mtNah-5Euzub-aA8b9Z-bEV5DR-8ta1FY-hn7WmH-9xVF1e-qHcH9X-V61Zv8-98cbwh-2ep7LBS-29UjNxA-9pBhB9-5ptRcS-ELRwH4-YUoeZz-VH62wQ-5qacFh-iUfPMn-XRyuAJ-SDLxuy-26obis1-pidGDp-fq8iRj-4iNoSh-9Hk8R5-5Sc2gj-nNzvsg-qTKUA7-nLjtcv-VSftQa-bkABZZ-pJZQgn-3kQjaT-dmucvu-WVJAm6
[12] https://www.flickr.com/photos/crustmania/
[13] https://www.flickr.com
[14] https://www.pexels.com/photo/creek-in-a-forest-1271620/
[15] https://www.pexels.com/@andreimike
[16] https://www.pexels.com
[17] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Webcomic_xkcd_-_Wikipedian_protester.png
[18] https://commons.wikimedia.org
[19] http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/scientific-knowledge-social/
[20] http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS105130
[21] http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/aag_6.jsp#VID4
[22] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caution_bribe_coming_through_washington_dc_1.jpg
[23] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Djembayz
[24] https://commons.wikimedia.org/
[25] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/bioet533/node/671
[26] http://guru.psu.edu/policies/RA20.html
[27] https://corporate-media.arcelormittal.com/media/azefvvqa/code-of-business-conduct_en.pdf