Module Background and Methods from "Beyond Adversarial Ethics"
Author(s):
Caroline Whitbeck
Excerpted from "Beyond Adversarial Ethics: Web Resources for Solving Problems About Research Conduct" presented at the 2000 Sigma Xi Forum, by Caroline Whitbeck
Background
Group Mentoring in Responsible Research Conduct is a modular sequence of activities in the responsible conduct of research for faculty, trainees and staff. These Web resources for exploration of issues in the responsible conduct of research among students, faculty, postdoctoral fellows and research staff are being greatly expanded under grant PHS-NIH# T15 AI07592
"A Modular Short Course in Research Ethics" September 1, 1999 - August 31, 2002.
Many of us who are involved in this project have also taught the responsible conduct of research in formal courses, in informal settings, in seminars and in speaker series. Often, as good as those are, those methods address students only. As Judith Swazey said, the trick really is to teach the faculty. It's not that most faculty members need the basics. Very often, they know the basics. In fact, they often have a very sophisticated understanding of how to behave, but they don't know how to talk about it and transmit their understanding to their students. Students often do not know how to approach their advisors with questions about research conduct.
Part of our purpose is to create the circumstances in which those discussions will take place. We are not just transferring information. The learning situation we offer is far different from that of individuals memorizing regulations and taking a test on them--the approach that is often used to acquiring and demonstrating knowledge of the ethical requirements for research with human subjects. All of these modes of education have value, but the method we offer focuses on education that develops awareness, discretion, and judgment of departments, laboratories,
and other research communities as well as the individuals in them. The goal is not merely to ensure that everyone is following the rules, but to strengthen the investigators' ability to address the host of subtle issues of research practice. Strengthening the investigators' ability requires improvement of the group recognition of and support for norms appropriate to particular research contexts, and development and transmission of the ability to devise ways of satisfying many potentially competing demands simultaneously.
I started this education 10 year ago in the computer science "area" (that is, division) of the Electrical Engineering/Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the then "area" chairman (roughly: the head of graduate studies for computer science), Albert Meyer. The microsystems area of EECS subsequently took it up and made it their own with the leadership of Steven Senturia. The basic goal is to develop education for all members of a department that will be taken over and become a part of the life of the department. The method may change somewhat in the process. It is more useful for the department to develop both standards of conduct that suit the character of research, conventions and practices (e.g., journal practices) in their disciplinary area, and the means for group mentoring of their students, than it is for an outsider to have long-term responsibility for education in the responsible conduct of research. Elysa Koppelman or I run a few sessions to demonstrate how to replace lectures and case presentations with problem solving of problems common to the groups' research practice. We model how to keep the session focused on problem-solving, rather than disputing over what value trumps what, or taking sides in the conflicts described in the scenarios.
The problem-oriented presentation of material is very important; that is, we ask people to solve problems together. We use an active learning approach; that is, we start by giving people some experiential materials, some scenarios presenting problem situations they wrestle with. We realize that few people are going to do the reading until they become engaged in solving the problems. On-line readings for each topic are on the Web, along with a selected bibliography on the topic.
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Main Method
A method we usually use is to put together a collection of scenarios that present plausible problems in that topic area, such as authorship, reviewing articles and grants, or the supervisor-trainee relationship. Then we distribute them by e-mail. The scenarios do not have to be discipline specific, but the majority of them have to present problems that would be plausible in that discipline. We also invite participants to submit other scenarios for discussion. They would send these to me by e-mail. I remove identifiers from them, and they are included among the scenarios handed out at the session. It means that participants who have an issue they think the department needs to discuss can submit it for discussion. (Some students who submit scenarios prefer not to have their name associated with the scenarios.) As valuable as it is to have the new scenarios, it is valuable just to ask people if they would like to add scenarios, so they understand that the session is about addressing the problems they face.
The advance distribution of scenarios is important to build interest in sessions. The scenarios present problems that participants might commonly face. Some attend because they are curious about the situations, or because they are looking for better answers to those problems, or they want to share their hand-earned experience, or even because they don't want their department to come to a common consensus on norms without their input. Ideally, the department adds to our store of scenarios and eventually takes over running the discussions.
Let's look at a few scenarios. For example, consider a scenario on the subject of reviewing and editing. In this scenario, you are asked to suppose that you are asked to review an article that contains a proof and you become intrigued by the topic. After a few weeks, you come up with a shorter and better proof. You feel clear about your recommendations about the publishability of this result. What, if anything, do you do with your better proof?
Our Web page statement of this scenario has links to interpretative comments from two people in two different disciplines that both produce theorems. The first is in computer theory, the second is in statistics. The two disciplines each bring different expectations to the scenario. The difference in expectations is due in part to a difference in the two disciplines over the relative significance of having any proof of some theorem as compared to having an elegant proof of a theorem. This difference illustrates the point that we are seeking to strengthen the skills of groups for solving ethical problems that arise in their field, rather than simply understand the rules that apply to all investigators.
Consider another scenario from the responsible authorship module. This scenario was recently given to us by Gerald Saidel, professor in the biomedical engineering department at Case Western Reserve University. Initially one student is slated to be first author of an article. The journal to which
the article is submitted requires some revisions, however, and another student works on the manuscript. Now who should be included as authors, and what order should the authors be listed?
Participants in the discussions of the scenarios learn from one another the variety of situations that may underlie the description given. That discussion helps both the faculty and trainees to identify:
- Factors that are morally and practically relevant
- Further information that one would wish to have, the moral costs of getting it by various methods
- Potential pitfalls that might attend jumping to a conclusion or hasty action
Sometimes participants will want immediately to issue a judgment on the situation or the individuals in it. It may take a bit of time for them to see that we are trying to understand the situation and the uncertainties of it. We try to help the group engage in wise deliberation, and demonstrate how reasonable and responsible people deal with ethically significant problems about the conduct of research. The goal is to increase the group's ability to learn from one another, recognize the many different realities that may underlie a given scenario description, responsibly investigate that situation, and devise responses that satisfy many ethical constraints simultaneously.
Often the first time we lead a module with a department, some faculty approach the gathering with the attitude that this is going to be simple. They think the departmental faculty members will say how research is supposed to be conducted, and the students will learn. When the faculty members start to discuss how to respond to the scenario situation, they may find out that they disagree about at least some aspects of the response. That's a major bit of learning. When they discover the scope and limits of their areas of agreement, they begin to decide how much latitude there is for acceptable variation in research conduct, and what is simply out of bounds. This clarification is often very important for the students who are frequently confused by differences in the research conduct of the faculty members.
I emphasize that we are not seeking to provide an algorithm for coming to a judgment about the rights and wrongs in a particular case, although we often make reference to applicable ethical standards in exploring the problem. Our purpose is rather to prepare a community to discuss these things with one another so that they can take wiser approaches and prevent
many later problems. Serious conflicts or wrong doing in research are much easier to prevent than to resolve once they have occurred.
To take a completely different module topic, you will see we have several modules on research with special groups of subjects. For example, we have one on research with children and another on research with human biological materials. We chose these topics because of the need for educational materials on these topics and partly based on what we had special expertise at Case to do. We wanted to address topics to which we could make a special contribution.
Here are some scenarios from the module on the relationship of supervisors (or "mentors") and their trainees. This one is about a a student who is finishing a dissertation. The professor who is the thesis supervisor has some outside consulting and asks if the student would like to earn some extra money by creating some computer code for the consulting project. The 4th student doesn't feel free to refuse. The scenario is written from the position of another student who is trying to get the first student to speak up. This scenario can raise all sorts of issues. Some are quite subtle. For example, why is it that foreign students are less likely to refuse, when those requests are made? Because they are often in a more vulnerable position: if they lose their research assistantship, they can't readily borrow money and stay in the program, as a U.S. student could. I use this as an illustration of the kinds of things that may come up in these discussions, and that you want to be prepared for, if you lead discussions with these scenarios.
In the scenario on consulting, we put an additional piece of information: some universities do not allow faculty to hire their own thesis students in their consulting to prevent situations such as this one. We do add some references to organizational responses that prevent some of the problems we describe. If your university or department has some such organizational responses, please let us know about them, so we can post them on Web pages.
Here is one on bias on the part of a supervisor. It is written from the position of a student whose parents come from a country that has centuries-old enmity toward the country of origin of the student's thesis supervisor. The student notices that students of the supervisor's ethnicity get invited more to meet the visiting scientists and other career opportunities. The student is getting a good technical education, however. What, if anything, should the student do? How would the student even raise this kind of issue?
Here is on gender issues. Sometimes when your advisor is talking about research with you and other students (all the rest of whom are male), he walks into the men's room, continuing the conversation. They guys follow him in and you are left out and have to hope that one of the male students will fill you in later. I added to this scenario many things that were happening in the particular university for which I first wrote this scenario. All the scenarios are based on compilations of real incidents although not all of them happened together, nor did they always happen to one person. A new scenario can sometimes raise consciousness about an issue, and sometimes the raising of consciousness is enough.
Here is one about a student who thinks he has finished his dissertation but is told by his advisor that he must do a lot more work. This turns out to be the all-time favorite scenario. This was created by an undergraduate student of mine, Todd Riggs. It is relevant in disciplines like History as well as scientific fields. Very many participants recognize the situation. One Nobel Prize winner at Princeton said he knew the people involved.
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Variations on the Method
We provide some variations on our method. For the Endless Dissertation scenario, we provide some additional questions to help raise some consciousness about supervisor-trainee relationship issues. When we offer the authorship module, sometimes we vary the method from the panel-led discussion. One of the methods is to have student trainees interview one or more potential supervisors. Postdocs already have their supervisor, but it is useful for beginning graduate students. It became a required activity for the new students in computer science within the EECS department at MIT, when I offered the modules there. Albert Meyer and I created sample questions for those interviews. If the supervisors did not like these questions, they could take it up with us, rather than the students. Now, of course, the questions are on the Web, so students at other institutions may be able to use them to start their own conversations with their thesis supervisor or
departmental advisor. That may make it easier for students at other institutions to get answers to these questions.
Some faculty may refuse to answer the questions of course. Indeed, in collaborating on an ethics statement on responsible research conduct for an illustrious scientific group, I recall one collaborator saying that there was no way he would let his students ask him these questions on apportioning credit. He said that if trainees were going to work with him, they would just have to trust him. Sometimes a faculty member refuses to discuss things with students because he or she doesn't know how to begin to talk about the issues. In this respect the situation is similar to parents who are reluctant to talk to their children about sex, even when they know they should. Some very smart investigators don't know how to begin to talk about research conduct. They don't like to do something badly. What they don't know how to do well, they avoid doing at all, unless they are given an opportunity to learn.
We found that if we provide the students with a list of questions, none of our faculty-- I should say none of the MIT EECS faculty, who are the first ones with whom we did this-- none of them objected. Some even said that after a few years of having the discussion in interviews by the new computer science students, they now had the same discussion with all students, from whatever department, who wanted to work with them. It is very important to give the faculty questions ahead of time, so they will be prepared when the students come to interview with them. When it comes to educating faculty along with the trainees, I find the groups to have similar needs and interests. The main difference is that the faculty know more than they know how to talk about, and they are often more wary of looking stupid.
Now let's hear from Elysa Koppelman about the participant evaluations of the module sessions we have done so far.