Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Part I Academic Cheating
- Part II Academic Excuses and Fairness
- Part III Authorship and Credit
- Part IV Confidentiality’s Limits
- Part V Data Analysis, Reporting, and Sharing
- Part VI Designing Research
- Part VII Fabricating Data
- 37 Beware the Serial Collaborator
- 38 My Ethical Dilemma
- 39 Data Not to Trust
- 40 When a Research Assistant (Maybe) Fabricates Data
- 41 The Pattern in the Data
- 42 It Is Never as Simple as It Seems
- 43 Commentary to Part VII
- Part VIII Human Subjects
- Part IX Personnel Decisions
- Part X Reviewing and Editing
- Part XI Science for Hire and Conflict of Interest
- Epilogue Why Is Ethical Behavior Challenging?
- Index
- References
38 - My Ethical Dilemma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Part I Academic Cheating
- Part II Academic Excuses and Fairness
- Part III Authorship and Credit
- Part IV Confidentiality’s Limits
- Part V Data Analysis, Reporting, and Sharing
- Part VI Designing Research
- Part VII Fabricating Data
- 37 Beware the Serial Collaborator
- 38 My Ethical Dilemma
- 39 Data Not to Trust
- 40 When a Research Assistant (Maybe) Fabricates Data
- 41 The Pattern in the Data
- 42 It Is Never as Simple as It Seems
- 43 Commentary to Part VII
- Part VIII Human Subjects
- Part IX Personnel Decisions
- Part X Reviewing and Editing
- Part XI Science for Hire and Conflict of Interest
- Epilogue Why Is Ethical Behavior Challenging?
- Index
- References
Summary
Note that I have altered a few details of this story to prevent the individuals in question from being identified. Aside from these minor changes, the tale I relate here is factually accurate.
When I was an advanced graduate student, I served for one summer and the beginning of a Fall semester as a part-time research assistant on a long-running project. The project was headed up Dr. B, a fairly recently minted MD who had been hired by a major university’s medical school. At the time, Dr. B was untenured, and was under intense pressure (which he related to me on several occasions) to publish articles in prestigious journals. Dr. B struck me as charismatic, hardworking, and ambitious. By his own admission, however, his methodological skills were not especially advanced, and he acknowledged feeling insecure as a new faculty member in a high-powered medical school environment.
One arm of the large project on which I assisted focused on neuro-psychological functioning in a widely researched adult psychiatric disorder. In my role as a research assistant, I met with Dr. B on numerous occasions and became intimately familiar with the test protocol, which was administered to psychiatric inpatients and nonpatient controls. Because I had extensive background in neuropsychological assessment, I administered the test battery to a number of patients, wrote up test reports, and periodically discussed the data collection and analysis plan with Dr. B.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethical Challenges in the Behavioral and Brain SciencesCase Studies and Commentaries, pp. 114 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015