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AbstractUsing artificial intelligence (AI) in research offers many important benefits for science and society but also creates novel and complex ethical issues. While these ethical issues do not necessitate changing established ethical norms of science, they require the scientific community to develop new guidance for the appropriate use of AI. In this article, we briefly introduce AI and explain how it can be used in research, examine some of the ethical issues raised when using it, and offer nine recommendations for responsible use, including: (1) Researchers are responsible for identifying, describing, reducing, and controlling AI-related biases and random errors; (2) Researchers should disclose, describe, and explain their use of AI in research, including its limitations, in language that can be understood by non-experts; (3) Researchers should engage with impacted communities, populations, and other stakeholders concerning the use of AI in research to obtain their advice and assistance and address their interests and concerns, such as issues related to bias; (4) Researchers who use synthetic data should (a) indicate which parts of the data are synthetic; (b) clearly label the synthetic data; (c) describe how the data were generated; and (d) explain how and why the data were used; (5) AI systems should not be named as authors, inventors, or copyright holders but their contributions to research should be disclosed and described; (6) Education and mentoring in responsible conduct of research should include discussion of ethical use of AI.

"Responsible Conduct of Research provides an overview of ethical, legal, and social issues in scientific research for science students, trainees and professional scientists. Written by two leading scholars in the field of research ethics, one with a background in natural science and the other with a background in philosophy and law, the book incorporates insights from these diverse disciplines throughout the text. The book provides in-depth analyses of a wide array of topics, including ethical theory and decision-making, misconduct, questionable research practices, research record-keeping, data sharing, data auditing, reproducibility, authorship, publication, peer review, intellectual property, conflict of interest, mentoring, safe research environment, animal experimentation, research with human subjects, and social responsibility. The book also includes interesting case studies and provocative questions at the end of each chapter that can serve as a basis for further analysis and discussion. The concluding chapter of the book describes some steps that researchers, institutional officials, government agencies, and scientific organizations can take to promote ethical conduct in scientific research. The 4th edition of Responsible Conduct of Research includes updated references and discussions of new and evolving topics, such as digital image manipulation, self-plagiarism, retractions, publication on pre-print servers, harassment, research with human biological samples, revisions to the Common Rule for research with human subjects, dual use research, the COVID-19 pandemic, providing science advise, and interactions with the media"--

BACKGROUND: The open science movement is transforming scientific practice with the goal of enhancing the transparency, productivity, and reproducibility of research. Nevertheless, transparency is a complex concept, and efforts to promote some forms of transparency may do relatively little to advance other important forms of transparency. OBJECTIVES: Drawing from the literature in history, philosophy, and sociology of science, we aim to distinguish between different forms of scientific transparency. Our goal is to identify strategies for achieving forms of transparency that are relevant not only to scientists but also to decision makers and members of the public. DISCUSSION: We draw a distinction between "scientifically relevant transparency" and "socially relevant transparency." Most of the prominent strategies associated with the open science movement (e.g., making data publicly available and registering studies) are designed primarily to promote scientifically relevant transparency. To achieve socially relevant transparency, which is particularly important in fields like environmental health, further steps are needed to provide scientific information in ways that are relevant to decision makers and members of the public. CONCLUSIONS: Promoting socially relevant transparency will require a range of activities by many different individuals and institutions. We propose an array of strategies that can be pursued by scientists and other scholars, journals, universities, funders, government agencies, and members of the public. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP4808

Many scientific journals, government agencies, and universities require disclosure of sources of funding and financial interests related to research, such as stock ownership, consulting arrangements with companies, and patents. Although disclosure has become one of the central approaches for responding to financial conflicts of interest (COIs) in research, critics contend that information about financial COIs does not serve as a reliable indicator of research credibility, and therefore, studies should be evaluated solely based on their scientific merits. We argue that, while it is indeed important to evaluate studies on their scientific merits, it is often difficult to detect significant influences of financial relationships that affect research credibility. Moreover, at least five factors can be examined to determine whether financial relationships are likely to enhance, undermine, or have no impact on the credibility of research. These include as follows: whether sponsors, institutions, or researchers have a significant financial stake in the outcome of a study; whether the financial interests of the sponsors, institutions, or researchers coincide with the goal of conducting research that is objective and reliable; whether the sponsor, institution, or researchers have a history of biasing research in order to promote their financial goals; how easy it is to manipulate the research in order to achieve financial goals; and whether oversight mechanisms are in place which are designed to minimize bias. Since these factors vary from case to case, evaluating the impact of financial relationships depends on the circumstances. In some situations, onemay decide that the financial relationships significantly undermine the study's credibility; in others, one may decide that they have no impact on credibility or even enhance it.

ABSTRACTIt is a common practice in qualitative research to transcribe audio or video files from interviews or focus groups and then destroy the files at some future time, usually after validating the transcript or concluding the research. We argue that it is time to rethink this practice and that retention of original qualitative data—including audio and video recordings—should be the default stance in most cases.

One of the most significant changes to the Common Rule is the requirement that institutions use a single institutional review board (IRB) for cooperative research in the U.S., unless more than one IRB is required by state, local or tribal law, or a signatory federal agency decides an exception is warranted. We surveyed human research protection program (HRPP) officials at the top U.S. research institutions to understand their knowledge and opinion of the mandate, what steps their institutions are taking, and difficulties their institutions are facing. 107 institutions (56.9%) responded to the survey. While support for the single-IRB mandate was positive overall, most respondents acknowledged that their institution is likely to face some difficulties complying with it. Regulatory agencies can help institutions to comply with the mandate by providing guidance concerning such issues as exceptions to the mandate, local context review, oversight and implementation of reliance agreements, and development of policies, procedures, and best practices.

This article reports the results of an anonymous survey of researchers at a government research institution concerning their perceptions about ethical problems with journal peer review. Incompetent review was the most common ethical problem reported by the respondents, with 61.8% (SE = 3.3%) claiming to have experienced this at some point during peer review. Bias (50.5%, SE = 3.4%) was the next most common problem. About 22.7% (SE = 2.8%) of respondents said that a reviewer had required them to include unnecessary references to his/her publication(s), 17.7% (SE = 2.6%) said that comments from reviewers had included personal attacks, and 9.6% (SE = 2.0%) stated that reviewers had delayed publication to publish a paper on the same topic. Two of the most serious violations of peer review ethics, breach of confidentiality (6.8%, SE = 1.7%) and using ideas, data, or methods without permission (5%, SE = 1.5%) were perceived less often than the other problems. We recommend that other investigators follow up on our exploratory research with additional studies on the ethics of peer review.