Ensuring PhD development of responsible conduct of research behaviors: who's responsible?

The importance of public confidence in scientific findings and trust in scientists cannot be overstated. Thus, it becomes critical for the scientific community to focus on enhancing the strategies used to educate future scientists on ethical research behaviors. What we are lacking is knowledge on how faculty members shape and develop ethical research standards with their students. We are presenting the results of a survey with 3,500 research faculty members. We believe this is the first report on how faculty work with and educate their PhD students on basic research standards. Specifically, we wanted to determine whether individual faculty members, who are advisors or mentors, differ in how they implemented components of responsible conduct of research (RCR) with their PhD students. Mentors were more likely than advisors or supervisors to report working with all of their PhDs, who graduated in the last 5 years, on the 17 recognized critical components of RCR training and research skill development. We also found about half of the faculty members believe RCR is an institutional responsibility versus a faculty responsibility. Less than a quarter have had opportunities to participate in faculty training to be a better mentor, advisor, or research teacher, and about one third of faculty did not or could not remember whether they had guidelines related to their responsibilities to PhD students. We discuss the implications of our findings and focus on ways that PhD research mentoring can be enhanced.

Faculty members' perceptions of advising versus mentoring: does the name matter?

The recommendations, during the past 20 years, to improve PhD scientific training and graduate school success, have focused on the significance of mentoring. It is well established that PhD students with mentors have significantly more success in graduate school as demonstrated by publishing papers before they graduate and by making presentations. Have faculty and academic institutions embraced the mentoring role? This study explores the views of 3,500 scientists who have primary responsibilities to educate PhD and MD/PhD students. Faculty members report they are more likely to prefer being viewed as advisors (54 %) than mentors (38 %). Through an examination of perceptions about specific responsibilities of advisors and mentors, faculty members provide a description of their culture and the expectations they have about themselves and others. One would expect that because mentoring requires additional time and involvement that faculty would report differences between advising and mentoring. However, faculty members perceive few differences between advisors and mentors. We examine the implications of these findings. Future scientists need to be confident their education includes the opportunity to acquire the best possible research skills. To develop advisors who have the ability to provide this training, the process begins by defining role expectations and responsibilities and preparing advisors to interact with doctoral students in ways comparable to mentors. We expect faculty members to know how to teach and how to mentor; yet, we rarely discuss how to develop and shape the necessary skills of advisors so, that they more closely resemble those of mentors.

Preparing whistleblowers for reporting research misconduct.

Making an allegation of research misconduct can be stressful for a whistleblower. The Research Integrity Officer (RIO) can play an important role in helping reduce the stress by thoroughly discussing what whistleblowers can expect if they make an allegation. Through interviews with 77 RIOs who had recently handled a research misconduct case, we found that RIOs who addressed more topics as well as specific aspects of the topics were more likely to have used some type of memory aide in their initial contact with whistleblowers, talked with ORI staff or other RIOs about "hypothetical" research misconduct cases, or attended a RIO boot camp training. We believe that RIOs who more fully inform whistleblowers are providing timely preparation and building whistleblowers' confidence so they can make a more informed decision about reporting and experience less stress.

Assessing the preparedness of research integrity officers (RIOs) to appropriately handle possible research misconduct cases.

Institutions receiving federal funding for research from the U.S.Public Health Service need to have policies and procedures to both prevent research misconduct and to adjudicate it when it occurs. The person who is designated to handle research misconduct is typically referred to as the research integrity officer (RIO). In this interview study we report on 79 RIOs who describe how they would handle allegations of research misconduct. Their responses were compared to two expert RIOs. The responses to the allegations in the scenarios demonstrated that RIOs are not uniformly well prepared to handle activities associated with reported allegations of research misconduct. We recommend greater preparation through directed training, use of check lists of possible behaviors necessary to consider when situations arise, being involved in a network of RIOs so one can discuss options, and the possible need to certify RIOs.

Mentoring and research misconduct: an analysis of research mentoring in closed ORI cases.

We are reporting on how involved the mentor was in promoting responsible research in cases of research misconduct. We reviewed the USPHS misconduct files of the Office of Research Integrity. These files are created by Institutions who prosecute a case of possible research misconduct; ORI has oversight review of these investigations. We explored the role of the mentor in the cases of trainee research misconduct on three specific behaviors that we believe mentors should perform with their trainee: (1) review source data, (2) teach specific research standards and (3) minimize stressful work situations. We found that almost three quarters of the mentors had not reviewed the source data and two thirds had not set standards. These two behaviors are positively correlated. We did not see convincing evidence in the records that mentors were causing stress, but it was apparent in the convicted trainees' confessions that over 50% experienced some kind of stress. Secondary data, while not created for this research purpose, allows us to look at concrete research behaviors that are otherwise not very researchable. We believe it is important for mentors and institutions to devote more attention to teaching mentors about the process of education and their responsibilities in educating the next generation of scientists. This becomes a critical issue for large research groups who need to determine who is in charge educating, supervising and assuring data integrity.