FEATURE ARTICLE
Ethical Problems in Academic Research
A survey of doctoral candidates and faculty raises important questions about the ethical environment of graduate education and research
Judith Swazey, Melissa Anderson, Karen Louis
Disciplinary and Departmental Factors
The sometimes striking differences in responses across disciplines
are a particularly challenging aspect of our findings. If scientists
and engineers are serious about efforts to ensure the integrity of
research, it is important to understand why we found pronounced
variations in reported instances of scientific misconduct. For
example, over 40 percent of faculty in civil engineering and
sociology have encountered plagiarism by their graduate students; a
higher percent of faculty in civil engineering than in other fields
report knowledge of plagiarism and data falsification by their
colleagues; microbiology students report more data falsification by
faculty than do students in the other disciplines; and chemistry
students report the greatest amount of data falsification by their peers.
These patterns do not support the "bad apple" explanation
that is often proffered to account for scientific misconduct. In the
case of faculty, disciplinary variations also call into question the
generic explanation that scientific misconduct is primarily
attributable to the intense pressures in research-intensive
universities to obtain funding and to "publish or perish."
Faculty reports of higher rates of plagiarism by graduate students
in civil engineering and sociology may suggest that faculty in those
fields have more experience with evaluating student work compared to
faculty in chemistry and microbiology. In any event, the significant
rate of reported student plagiarism points to the role faculty need
to play in instructing even graduate students about appropriate
attribution standards. However, our data do not support the view
that faculty have the greatest difficulty in this area of
scholarship with foreign students, who may not be as knowledgeable
as U.S. students about attribution standards: In our sample,
although civil engineering does have the greatest number of foreign
students (46 percent), sociology has the fewest (17 percent).
To pose another discipline-related question, why does sociology have
the highest proportion of reported exposure to sexual harassment and
racial, ethnic or gender discrimination in every reporting category?
The answer does not reside solely, if at all, in the gender,
citizenship or racial composition of the departments in our sample.
Although sociology does have the highest percentage of female
faculty (45 percent) and students (55 percent), microbiology’s
percentages are nearly as high (32 and 45 percent respectively); yet
the reports of harassment and discrimination are high in one field
and relatively low in the other. With respect to citizenship,
sociology has the lowest percentage of both faculty and students who
are foreign nationals. Nor can the higher levels of reported
knowledge of racial discrimination be accounted for by a
significantly higher percentage of minority students and faculty.
For example, although sociology has the highest percentage of U.S.
minority students in our sample (11 percent), microbiology has
almost as many (9 percent).
Disciplinary variations, both in expectations about the consequences
of reporting suspected misconduct and in faculty’s views about
their shared responsibility for the ethical conduct of their
students and colleagues, are also important for understanding the
ethical environment in graduate training and research. Why, for
example, are chemistry faculty more certain than faculty in civil
engineering, microbiology and sociology that they could report
suspected wrongdoing without retaliation? Why, conversely, are civil
engineering faculty and students more certain they would experience
sanctions? In terms of professional self-regulation, why do
chemistry and microbiology faculty believe more strongly than their
counterparts in civil engineering that they have a collective
responsibility for their students' ethical conduct? What accounts
for the fact that chemistry faculty believe they exercise such a
responsibility to a greater extent than do faculty in the other
three disciplines, or that sociology faculty believe they exercise
the least amount? And why, when their appraisals reflect a high
degree of collective responsibility for their students, do chemistry
faculty believe more strongly than faculty in the other three
disciplines that they bear little responsibility for their
colleagues' conduct?
Our larger body of survey data, as well as in-depth interviews
conducted with faculty and graduate students, indicate that
understanding the nature of disciplines and departments will help to
explain why certain types of ethical problems take place more
frequently in some fields and graduate programs than in others and
will, in turn, suggest strategies to address these problems. In
addition to the specialized knowledge and techniques that
distinguish them, academic disciplines have distinctive
cultures—that is, particular beliefs, norms, values, and
patterns of work and interpersonal interaction that affect the
behavior of individuals within the discipline. Thus, for example,
one could look not only at the importance that different fields give
to various types of misconduct or questionable practices, but also
at what opportunities are provided by the nature of the research
training and research work.
The department is the local embodiment of a discipline, and the
climate of a department—that is, the psychologically important
aspects of the work environment—also affects the activities
and attitudes of its members. For example, we found that in highly
competitive departments—those in which students have to
compete for departmental resources as well as faculty time and
attention—graduate students are significantly more likely to
observe research and other types of misconduct by their peers and
faculty. When we considered only survey items referring to research
policies, misuse of university or research funds and trying to get
by on the work of others—what might be called employment
misconduct—we found that such misconduct is significantly more
likely to be observed by graduate students in departments whose
faculty and students collaborate on publications. Faculty members'
observations of misconduct are also linked with climate factors. In
departments whose members put their own interests first, compete for
resources and are in continual conflict, faculty witness
significantly more misconduct. The preferential treatment of some
students has the same effect on faculty observations of misconduct.
These types of findings suggest that attention to the quality of a
department's climate and structure—which have many alterable
dimensions—should be an important component of preventive or
remedial strategies to deal with misbehavior.
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