Wednesday, July 27, 2016
A Roundtable on Ethics, Privacy, and Research Reviews
The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and the Ohio State University's Program on Data and Governance invite you to a roundtable discussion of ethics, privacy, and practical research review in corporate settings that will be held on Tuesday, June 14, 2016, at FPF (1400 Eye Street, NW #450) from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT. This roundtable is an important extension of FPF's December 2015 workshop, "Beyond IRBs: Designing Ethical Review Processes for Big Data Research," supported by the National Science Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
This timely event, which follows the White House's call to develop strong data ethics frameworks, will convene corporate and academic leaders to discuss ethical review processes in corporate settings. We will hear from key representatives from AT&T; Facebook; Iowa State University; Ohio State University, Mortiz College of Law; and Washington & Lee University School of Law. A major focus of the roundtable will be on a new paper by Facebook's Molly Jackman and Lauri Kanerva entitled, "Evolving the IRB: Building Robust Review for Industry Research."
This event is free and open to the public, but please register
as space is limited.
as space is limited.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
New Report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues: Bioethics for Every Generation: Deliberation and Education in Health, Science, and Technology.
The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (Bioethics Commission) has published a new report, Bioethics for Every Generation: Deliberation and Education in Health, Science, and Technology.
Since 2010, Bioethics Commission has completed 10 projects on topics as diverse as privacy and whole genome sequencing, ethics and Ebola, and neuroscience and society. Presented with topics that involve deeply held values, public concern, and controversial questions, the Bioethics Commission approached each project with reasoned deliberation, inviting testimony from experts in various disciplines and from across the country and the world to weigh in, soliciting input from the public, and conducting almost 200 hours of public discussion. Deliberation has been a key feature of this Bioethics Commission’s work.
In addition, in each of its reports, the Bioethics Commission’s substantive recommendations have included suggested improvements in ethics and bioethics education to advance ethical decisions and policymaking. Following the release of each report, the Bioethics Commission published educational materials to amplify its analysis and recommendations, tailoring its work to diverse stakeholders.
The Bioethics Commission chose deliberation and education as its capstone topic to underscore the importance it places on these two tools, and to demonstrate how deliberation and ethics education mutually reinforce one another to create a more democratic and just society. The report offers eight recommendations to advance the use of both tools as they intersect with bioethics.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Repost: Relaunch of the Online Ethics Center
|
The National Academy of
Engineering recently relaunched the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and
Science (OEC). Previously focused primarily on ethics issues in engineering and
research, the redesigned website has expanded to encompass ethics issues in the
sciences.
The mission of the site
is to provide engineers, scientists, faculty, and students with resources for
understanding and addressing ethically significant issues that arise in
scientific and engineering practice and from developments in science and
engineering.
The new site features
case studies, educational activities, and bibliographies, among other
materials, categorized by resource type, topic, and field. A revised OEC
community directory connects authors’ profiles with their resources. Content
Editorial Boards evaluate, identify, and develop materials in six areas, and,
together with an Outreach Group, serve as liaisons to their communities.
The project is funded by
the National Science Foundation and undertaken with the cooperation of the National
Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, in collaboration with
the Ethics Education Library of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the
Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology. More information is
available on the project page.
Please explore the site
and let us know what you think. We hope you enjoy it and find it useful!
Sincerely,
Frazier Benya, Rachelle
Hollander, and Simil Raghavan
Staff for the Online
Ethics Center for Engineering and Science
Center for Engineering
Ethics and Society
National Academy of
Engineering
National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Friday, April 1, 2016
New Journal Article by CSEP: "Twenty-Five Years of Ethics Across the Curriculum - An Assessment" in Teaching Ethics Journal
"Twenty-Five Years of Ethics Across the Curriculum - An Assessment"
Michael Davis; Elisabeth Hildt; Kelly Laas
Twenty-Five Years of Ethics Across the Curriculum - An AssessmentAfter twenty-five years of integrating ethics across the curriculum at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions conducted a survey of full-time faculty to investigate: a) what ethical topics faculty thought students from their discipline should be aware of when they graduate, b) how widely ethics is currently being taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, c) what ethical topics are being covered in these courses, and d) what teaching methods are being used. The survey found that while progress spreading ethics across the curriculum has been substantial, it remains incomplete. The faculty think more should be done. From these findings we draw six lessons for ethics centers engaged in encouraging ethics across the curriculum
Monday, February 8, 2016
NSF breaks new ground in reprimanding authors of flawed Science paper By Jeffrey Mervis
Retractions of scientific papers are common. But the circumstances surrounding this week’s retraction of a 12-year-old Science paper, involving research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), appear to be highly unusual.
The case highlights the sometimes fraught relationship between journals, researchers, and funding agencies. And it has drawn attention to some apparently rare steps that NSF took against researchers who the agency says engaged in unacceptable research practices—but not misconduct.
The 2004 paper, reporting on a novel method of synthesizing new materials through the use of RNA catalysts, has been investigated by two universities and NSF. In 2013 the NSF Office of Inspector General (OIG), an independent watchdog, found that the three authors, then a graduate student and two biochemistry professors at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, had falsified their results and were guilty of scientific misconduct.
NSF officials overruled that finding in a move that agency observers say is rare. However, in a May 2015 letter to the researchers, NSF said that their actions were “certainly a departure from accepted practices.” And NSF agreed with OIG that the researchers—Lina Gugliotti, Daniel Feldheim, and Bruce Eaton—needed to “clarify the scientific publication record” (by submitting a correction to Science) before they could be eligible to apply for NSF grants. That ruling triggered a chain of events that led to today’s retraction notice in Science.
The case breaks new ground for NSF, say those who follow research misconduct. One novel twist is that the agency meted out a major punishment—ineligibility for NSF funding—despite finding that the researchers weren’t guilty of misconduct. The punishment is instead based on NSF’s conclusion that the numerous flaws in the paper meant the researchers had violated an agency rule requiring grantees to publish “all significant findings.”
Another new wrinkle was NSF’s decision to tell the researchers that submitting a correction toScience would be the essential step in restoring their eligibility. In most cases where NSF finds misconduct, the perpetrators face debarment from federal funding for a fixed amount of time as long as 5 years. (OIG had recommended that the researchers be banned for 3 years from serving as reviewers or consultants to the agency.)
Correction or retraction?
After receiving NSF’s letter, the researchers did submit a correction to Science, says Marcia McNutt, the journal’s editor-in-chief. But the journal decided not to publish it. Instead, McNutt says she opted for a retraction that is carefully worded to conform to the NSF ruling. “The retraction says that [the researchers] submitted a correction to the journal,” she explains. “So according to the retraction, the authors have satisfied exactly what NSF asked them to do.”
According to McNutt, the 2004 Science paper contained far too many flaws to be dealt with in a correction. “Corrections are for honest errors. We don’t want to do corrections for truly sloppy science,” she told ScienceInsider.
McNutt’s characterization of the paper is drawn from the NSF investigation, which concluded that the researchers were guilty of “an avoidance of protocols, a failure to meet expected scientific standards, a lack of expertise or training in the field of inquiry, poor oversight of less experienced team members, and the misrepresentation of data on which a conclusion was based. In short… an absence of care, if not sloppiness, and most certainly a departure from accepted practices.”
Based on that analysis, McNutt says she decided that a retraction was the only way to remove the stain on the scientific literature. “Now that [NSF’s] report is publicly available,” she explains, “I didn’t want the community to read it and think, ‘So this is the type of paper thatScience publishes?’” The retraction, she says, still allows the scientists to use subsequent papers that they have published to illustrate that their results were sound. Those later papers, McNutt says, is “the basis on which the research should be judged.”
McNutt hopes the retraction will also help curb what she sees as a rush-to-publish mentality among scientists that puts staking a claim above scientific rigor. “I’m worried about what will happen if top journals continue to publish flashy results that don’t hold up and that are slapped together and are shaky,” McNutt says. “I would prefer to send the message, ‘Don’t send those papers to this journal.’”
Lack of clarity
Many details in the case remain murky, however, because of federal laws designed to protect the privacy of the researchers under scrutiny. NSF has not acknowledged that the trio is the subject of its investigation, and their names were redacted from NSF documents released to a North Carolina newspaper that has closely followed the case. But several media outlets have identified the researchers, and Feldheim, now a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Eaton, who recently retired from that university, have publicly blasted NSF over the years for what they feel has been an unwarranted attack on their research. In 2014 they created a short-lived website, StandUp2ScienceBullies.com, to rally community support for their position.
Feldheim and Eaton did not respond to repeated invitations by ScienceInsider to talk about their situation. NSF also declined to discuss the case, citing privacy concerns. But McNutt, who discussed the issue with NSF Director France Córdova before deciding to retract the paper, says that NSF knew its ruling was taking it into uncharted waters.
“It sounded to me, when talking to France, that this might be a change in NSF’s attitude,” McNutt says. “I think they want to work more closely with the community to find ways to raise standards.”
McNutt was quick to add that “NSF doesn’t set journal policy. But I think they are looking for greater involvement in the process of maintaining high standards for scientific integrity.”
The case also calls attention to the messy process by which journals try to address errors in the literature, and the difference between a correction and a retraction. Researchers at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, reported this week in Nature on their struggle to get journals to correct mistakes in papers they had published; the researchers had discovered many of mistakes simply by reading the articles. In many cases, they reported, it was difficult to get journals to even acknowledge the errors, much less take appropriate action.
“There’s a vacuum of clarity on when an error warrants an erratum versus a retraction, much less an investigation into possible wrongdoing,” says the lead author, biostatistician David Allison. “There are some broad guidelines, but they aren’t very helpful to an editor trying to decide on the proper response.”
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Announcement: IIT CSEP Receives Grant from MacArthur Foundation
Illinois Tech’s Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP) Receives Grant from MacArthur Foundation
Chicago – January 20, 2016 – Illinois Institute of Technology’s Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP) has received a $200,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to enhance its highly regarded Ethics Code Collection (ECC). The ECC is a unique resource, comprising a curated collection of over 4,000 ethics codes and guidelines across a range of disciplines for over 40 years. With this generous funding from the MacArthur Foundation, it will serve as a more dynamic global resource for informing ethical decision making in professional, entrepreneurial, scientific, and technological fields, and inform critical research into the advancement of ethical practices in a rapidly changing world.
"This is an exciting step forward for the Ethics Center," says Elisabeth Hildt, director of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions and professor of philosophy in Illinois Tech's Lewis College of Human Sciences. "The MacArthur Foundation's support will allow us to extend one of the center's historical strengths—its collection of ethics codes—into the future. We are also particularly looking forward to investigating critically the manifold societal functions of ethics codes." This revitalized resource, and the research and greater public accessibility it will bring, present the opportunity to inform the development of ethical standards and practices within professional and entrepreneurial communities across the globe, including countries with newly emerging democratic civil societies.
ECC currently is used by professors and students, by entrepreneurs and practitioners looking for guidance in how to resolve professional ethical issues in their daily work, by professional societies writing their own codes of ethics, and by consumers interested in finding out more about the ethical guidelines of professionals.
Funding from the MacArthur Foundation will provide the resources to embark on an extensive design strategy to improve the digital ECC, and will include tools such as better keyword search, sorting capabilities, comparisons, and downloading in different formats. Funding will also enable new research on the current and future roles of ethics codes within society, business, and technological innovation.
The Illinois Tech Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions is a leading center of research in science and engineering ethics since 1976, operating within the university’s Lewis College of Human Sciences
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Jennifer Clement
Communications Manager
312-567-5779 (office)
Monday, January 4, 2016
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Conference, Basque Country, March 10-11, 2016
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI):
The Problematic Quest for “Right” Impacts
Miguel Sanchez-Mazas Chair at University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU and the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University are delighted to announce the Conference on RRI: The Problematic Quest for “Right” Impacts.
The conference will be in Donostia-San Sebastian (Basque Country), March 10-11, 2016.
Call for Papers
We invite the submission of contributed papers from researchers working in any topic related to the aims of the conference (see abstract below). Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be emailed to rri2016@gmail.com by January 10, 2016. Abstracts must be prepared for blind review. Author details are to be included on a separate cover sheet. The intended allocated time for presentations is 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion time).
We encourage especially submissions from women researchers and junior scholars.
Deadline for submissions: January 10, 2016
Notification of acceptance: January 25, 2016
Registration deadline: February 28, 2016
Abstract
The European Commission claims that research and engineering activities under the next R & D Framework Programme, “Horizon 2020” (2014-2020), will be conducted according to a “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) framework, meaning that “societal actors work together during the whole research and innovation process in order to better align both the process and its outcomes, with the values, needs and expectations of European society” (EC, 2012, p. ii). RRI can be understood thus as an effort to justify innovation not on grounds of uncritical or taken for granted macro-economic assumptions, but on the basis of societally-beneficial objectives, or challenges, as openly defined and debated by a plurality of societal actors. As such, RRI-based EU policy aims to introduce “broader foresight and impact assessments for new technologies, beyond their anticipated market-place benefits and risks” (von Schomberg 2013, p. 51).
Explicitly characterized as a “challenge-based approach”, Horizon 2020 claims therefore to be prepared and oriented to address “major concerns shared by citizens in Europe and elsewhere”, including human and environmental health, sustainability, energy efficiency, climate action, inclusiveness, security, and freedom. However, are these generic challenges self-evident? How are they constituted and by whom? Can those challenges be challenged? How are they operationalized? On what normative bases? These and other similar questions express a legitimate concern for the main dynamics, assumptions and priorities by which normative frameworks are constituted and institutionalized in RRI-based EU research policy. This conference aims to interrogate the heterogeneous and contingent socio-technical processes that guide, enable and also constrain RRI’s quest for the “right” impacts.
For more information, please see the attached flyer. There is no registration fee to participate in the conference, but registration is required. To register, please send your name/surname, contact details and affiliation by email to CRRI2016@gmail.com no later than February 28, 2016.
For further details or queries, please contact the conference organizers:
Andoni Eizagirre (aeizagirre@mondragon.edu) or
Hannot Rodriguez (hannot.rodriguez@ehu.eus)
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