Sankar Pamela, Cho Mildred K, Monahan Keri, Nowak Kamila
Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania, 3401 Market Street, Suite 320, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University, 1215 Welch Road, Modular A, Stanford, CA, 94305-5417, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2015 Oct;21(5):1353-66. doi: 10.1007/s11948-014-9596-y. Epub 2014 Nov 19.
Appeals to scrutinize the use of race and ethnicity as variables in genetics research notwithstanding, these variables continue to be inadequately explained and inconsistently used in research publications. In previous research, we found that published genetic research fails to follow suggestions offered for addressing this problem, such as explaining the basis on which these labels are assigned to populations. This study, an analysis of genetic research articles using race or ethnicity terms, explores possible features of journals that are associated with improved reporting of race and ethnicity in genetic research. A journal's expressed commitment to improving how race and ethnicity are used in genetic research, demonstrated by an editorial or in its instructions to authors, was the strongest predictor of following recommendations about reporting race and ethnicity. Journal impact factor had only a limited positive effect on attention to these issues, suggesting that editorial resources associated with higher impact factor journals are not sufficient to improve practices. Our findings reiterate that race and ethnicity variables are used inconsistently in genetic research, but also shed light on how journals might improve practices by highlighting the need for scientists to carefully scrutinize the use of these variables in their work.
尽管有人呼吁对在遗传学研究中使用种族和族裔作为变量进行审查，但这些变量在研究出版物中的解释仍然不足，使用也不一致。在之前的研究中，我们发现已发表的遗传学研究未能遵循为解决这一问题而提出的建议，比如解释将这些标签应用于人群的依据。本研究对使用种族或族裔术语的遗传学研究文章进行分析，探讨与遗传学研究中种族和族裔报告改善相关的期刊可能具有的特征。期刊通过社论或对作者的说明所表达的致力于改善遗传学研究中种族和族裔使用方式的承诺，是遵循种族和族裔报告建议的最强预测因素。期刊影响因子对关注这些问题仅有有限的积极影响，这表明与高影响因子期刊相关的编辑资源不足以改善实践。我们的研究结果重申，种族和族裔变量在遗传学研究中的使用不一致，但也揭示了期刊如何通过强调科学家在工作中仔细审查这些变量使用情况的必要性来改善实践。
