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Context: The professional integrity of scientists is important to society as a whole and particularly to disciplines such as medicine that depend heavily on scientific advances for their progress.Objective: To characterize the professional norms of active scientists and compare them with those of individuals with institutional responsibility for the conduct of research.Design: A mailed survey consisting of 12 scenarios in 4 domains of research ethics. Respondents were asked whether an act was unethical and, if so, the degree to which they considered it unethical and to select responses and punishments for the act.Participants: A total of 924 National Science Foundation research grantees in 1993 or 1994 in molecular or cellular biology and 140 representatives from the researchers' institutions to the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity.Main Outcome Measures: Percentage of respondents considering an act unethical and the mean malfeasance rating on a scale of 1 to 10.Results: A total of 606 research grantees and 91 institutional representatives responded to the survey (response rate of 69% of those who could be contacted). Respondents reported a hierarchy of unethical research behaviors. The mean malfeasance rating was unrelated to the characteristics of the investigator performing the hypothetical act or to its consequences. Fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism received malfeasance ratings higher than 8.6, and virtually all thought they were unethical. Deliberately misleading statements about a paper or failure to give proper attribution received ratings between 7 and 8. Sloppiness, oversights, conflicts of interest, and failure to share were less serious still, receiving malfeasance ratings between 5 and 6. Institutional representatives proposed more and different interventions and punishments than the scientists.Conclusions: Surveyed scientists and institutional representatives had strong and similar norms of professional behavior, but differed in their approaches to an unethical act. INSET: Scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issue of the formation of a an international nonprofit alliance that will work to facilitate pooling the regulation, collection, and sharing of genomic data and related clinical data to better understand the role of genetics in health and disease. It informs that 70 research institutions, hospitals, and advocacy organizations including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Wellcome Trust, England, and the American Association for Cancer Research will be the members of the global alliance. It mentions that the alliance will harmonize the data sets from numerous institutions across the world.

Context: Increased competitive pressures on academic health centers may result in reduced discretionary funds from patient care revenues to support the performance of unsponsored research, including institutionally funded and faculty-supported activities.Objective: To measure the amount and distribution of unsponsored research activities and their outcomes.Design and Setting: Survey conducted in academic year 1996-1997 of 2336 research faculty in 117 medical schools. Responses were weighted to provide national estimates.Main Outcome Measures: Institutionally funded research as a proportion of total direct costs of research was compared across stages of market competition. Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship of performing unsponsored research to faculty characteristics and market stage.Results: Overall, 43% of faculty received institutional funding for research. Young faculty were more likely than others to receive institutional support (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1-1.9; P = .004). The amount of institutional support as a proportion of total funding was more than twice as high in less competitive markets (6.1%) compared with the most competitive markets (2.5%; P = .05). Most faculty (55%) performed faculty-supported research. Clinical researchers (OR, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.1-2.3), principal investigators (OR, 4.3; 95% CI, 2.8-7.0), faculty with high levels of research effort (OR, 6.2; 95% CI, 4.0-9.5) or institutional funding (OR, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.4-2.6), and faculty in the most competitive markets (OR, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.4-2.5) were more likely than others to conduct faculty-supported research. When undertaken by clinical researchers, these activities were supported by clinical income, extra hours worked, and discretionary funds, and often led to publications (76%) or grant awards (51%).Conclusions: Many academic health center faculty receive institutional support to conduct their research or fund the research themselves. Market pressures may be affecting the level of institutional funding available to faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]