1. Informed consent comprehension among vulnerable populations in Ecuador: video-delivered vs. in-person standard method
Ana Quevedo, M.S.a, Cecilia Condo, M.S.a, Gilda Valenzuela, LSWa, Lucy Molina, LSWa, Eduardo Castillo, LSW Candidatea, Ana Palacio, M.D., M.P.H.b,c, Denisse Pareja, M.D., M.S.P.H.a,c, Guillermo Prado, Ph.D.d,
Yannine Estrada, Ph.D.d, Maria Rosa Velazquez, M.A.P.d, and Leonardo Tamariz, M.D., M.P.H.b,c
aDepartment of Social Services, Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, Guayaquil, Ecuador; bMiller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, Florida, USA; cGeriatric Research, Education and
Clinical Centers (GRECC), Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Miami, Florida, USA; dDepartment of Epidemiology, University of Miami, Miami, Florida, USA
ABSTRACT
The informed consent comprehension process is key to engaging potential research subject participation. The aim of this study is to compare informed consent comprehension between two methods: standard
and video-delivered. We compared the in-person and video-delivered informed consent process in the Familias Unidas intervention. We evaluated comprehension using a 7-item true/false questionnaire. There
were a total of 152 participants in the control group and 87 in the experimental. General characteristics were similar between both groups (p > 0.05). First-attempt informed consent comprehension was higher in
the intervention group but was not statistically significant (80% and 78% respectively p = 0.44). A video-delivered informed consent process did not differ from the standard method of informed consent in a low
educational and socioeconomic environment.
KEYWORDS
General medicine/internal medicine; informed consent; low health literacy; low literacy; low literacy; research ethics; telehealth
2. When the research is not reproducible: the importance of author-initiated and institution-driven responses and investigations
Bor Luen Tang, Ph.D.
NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Research Compliance and Integrity Office and Department of Biochemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore
ABSTRACT
Important and potentially useful findings in the sciences are under more intense public scrutiny now more than ever. Other researchers in the field dive into replicating and expanding the findings while the media
swamps the community and the public with peripheral reporting and analyses. How should authors and the hosting/funding institutions respond when other workers in the field could not reproduce or replicate
their published results? To illustrate the importance of author-initiated and institution-driven investigations in response to outcries of research irreproducibility, I draw on comparisons between three recent and
well-publicized cases in the life sciences: betatrophin, Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) cells, and Natronobacterium gregoryi Argonaute (NgAgo). Swift, transparent responses and
investigations facilitate activation of the self-correcting mechanism of science and are likely also critical in preserving the community’ s resources, public trust, and the reputation of the institutions and
individuals concerned. Operational guidelines for author and institutional responses” towards external reports of irreproducibility should therefore be in place for all research intensive institutions.
KEYWORDS
Betatrophin; NgAgo; research ethics; research misconduct; research reproducibility; STAP cells
3. Associations between attitudes towards scientific misconduct and self-reported behavior
Søren Holm, M.D., Ph.D.a,b and Bjørn Hofmann, Ph.D.b,c
aCentre for Social Ethics and Policy, School of Law, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; bCentre of Medical Ethics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; cInstitute for the Health Sciences, Norwegian University
of Science and Technology, Gjøvik, Norway
ABSTRACT
We investigate the relationship between doctoral students’ attitudes towards scientific misconduct and their self-reported behavior. 203 questionnaires were distributed to doctoral candidates at the Faculty of
Medicine, University of Oslo 2016/ 2017. The response rate was 74%. The results show a correlation between attitudes towards misconduct and self-reported problematic behaviors among doctoral students in
biomedicine. The four most common reported misbehaviors are adding author(s) who did not qualify for authorship (17.9%), collecting more data after seeing that the results were almost statistically significant
(11.8%), turning a blind eye to colleagues’ use of flawed data or questionable interpretation of data (11.2%), and reporting an unexpected finding as having been hypothesized from the start (10.5%). We find
correlations between scientific misbehavior and the location of undergraduate studies and whether the respondents have had science ethics lectures previously. The study provides evidence for the concurrent
validity of the two instruments used to measure attitudes and behavior, i.e. the Kalichman scale and the Research Misbehavior Severity Score (RMSS). Although the direction of causality between attitudes and
cannot be determined in this study the correlation between the two indicates that it can be important to engender the right attitudes in early career researchers.
KEYWORDS
Dishonesty; doctoral students; fabrication; falsification; integrity; misbehavior; misconduct; plagiarism; science ethics
