Lipworth W, Kerridge I, Stewart C, Silva D, Upshur R
Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Royal North Shore Hospital and Sydney Health Ethics, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
J Bioeth Inq. 2023 Dec;20(4):607-616. doi: 10.1007/s11673-023-10289-w. Epub 2023 Dec 8.
During the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, preclinical and clinical research were sped up and scaled up in both the public and private sectors and in partnerships between them. This resulted in some extraordinary advances, but it also raised a range of issues regarding the ethics, rigour, and integrity of scientific research, academic publication, and public communication. Many of the failures of scientific rigour and integrity that occurred during the pandemic were exacerbated by the rush to generate, disseminate, and implement research findings, which not only created opportunities for unscrupulous actors but also compromised the methodological, peer review, and advisory processes that would usually identify sub-standard research and prevent compromised clinical or policy-level decisions. While it would be tempting to attribute these failures of science and its translation solely to the "unprecedented" circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality is that they preceded the pandemic and will continue to arise once it is over. Existing strategies for promoting scientific rigour and integrity need to be made more rigorous, better integrated into research training and institutional cultures, and made more sophisticated. They might also need to be modified or supplemented with other strategies that are fit for purpose not only in public health emergencies but in any research that is sped-up and scaled up to address urgent unmet medical needs.
在新冠疫情的最初几年，公共部门、私营部门及其合作关系中的临床前研究和临床研究都得到了加速和扩大。这带来了一些非凡的进展，但也引发了一系列关于科学研究、学术出版和公众传播的伦理、严谨性和诚信的问题。疫情期间出现的许多科学严谨性和诚信方面的失误，因急于生成、传播和应用研究结果而加剧，这不仅为不良行为者创造了机会，还损害了通常能够识别不合格研究并防止有缺陷的临床或政策层面决策的方法、同行评审和咨询流程。虽然人们很容易将这些科学及其转化方面的失误完全归因于新冠疫情的“前所未有的”情况，但实际情况是，这些失误在疫情之前就已存在，疫情结束后仍会继续出现。现有的促进科学严谨性和诚信的策略需要更加严格，更好地融入研究培训和机构文化，并更加完善。它们可能还需要修改或补充其他策略，这些策略不仅适用于公共卫生紧急情况，也适用于任何为满足迫切未满足的医疗需求而加速和扩大的研究。
