Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law, University of Leuven, Kapucijnenvoer 35, Box 7001, 3000, Louvain, Belgium.
Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Centre for Environment and Health, University of Leuven, 3000, Louvain, Belgium.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2018 Oct;24(5):1421-1436. doi: 10.1007/s11948-017-9965-4. Epub 2017 Sep 14.
Despite the ever increasing collaboration between industry and universities, the previous empirical studies on research integrity and misconduct excluded participants of biomedical industry. Hence, there is a lack of empirical data on how research managers and biomedical researchers active in industry perceive the issues of research integrity and misconduct, and whether or not their perspectives differ from those of researchers and research managers active in universities. If various standards concerning research integrity and misconduct are upheld between industry and universities, this might undermine research collaborations. Therefore we performed a qualitative study by conducting 22 semi-structured interviews in order to investigate and compare the perspectives and attitudes concerning the issues of research integrity and misconduct of research managers and biomedical researchers active in industry and universities. Our study showed clear discrepancies between both groups. Diverse strategies in order to manage research misconduct and to stimulate research integrity were observed. Different definitions of research misconduct were given, indicating that similar actions are judged heterogeneously. There were also differences at an individual level, whether the interviewees were active in industry or universities. Overall, the management of research integrity proves to be a difficult exercise, due to many diverse perspectives on several essential elements connected to research integrity and misconduct. A management policy that is not in line with the vision of the biomedical researchers and research managers is at risk of being inefficient.
尽管工业界和学术界之间的合作日益增加，但之前关于研究诚信和不当行为的实证研究排除了生物医学产业界的参与者。因此，缺乏关于在产业界活跃的研究经理和生物医学研究人员如何看待研究诚信和不当行为问题的实证数据，以及他们的观点是否与在大学活跃的研究人员和研究经理的观点不同。如果在工业界和学术界之间坚持各种关于研究诚信和不当行为的标准，这可能会破坏研究合作。因此，我们进行了一项定性研究，通过进行 22 次半结构化访谈，调查和比较了在产业界和学术界活跃的研究经理和生物医学研究人员对研究诚信和不当行为问题的看法和态度。我们的研究表明，这两个群体之间存在明显的差异。观察到了用于管理研究不当行为和促进研究诚信的不同策略。对研究不当行为给出了不同的定义，表明类似的行为被判断为异质。在个人层面上也存在差异，即访谈对象是在产业界还是学术界。总的来说，由于与研究诚信和不当行为相关的几个基本要素存在许多不同的观点，因此管理研究诚信是一项困难的工作。与生物医学研究人员和研究经理的观点不一致的管理政策有失效的风险。
