Research ethics

Simon Baker examines the rise of China as a research nation and the worries this provokes among some Westerners

Australian researchers say a lack of guidance material forces researchers to second-guess ethics committees

New £5.7 million institute at the Technical University of Munich triggers ‘ethics washing’ debate

Tributes paid to leading research integrity expert

Portland State University’s investigation of a researcher who published hoax papers misses the point of ethical oversight, says Jeffrey Flier

Despite widespread recognition of prevalence of errors in psychological research, academics remain reluctant to own up to their errors

New European rule on protecting data from human research subjects being found so complicated as to slow medical science

Scientists must act in wake of He Jiankui case, say US and Chinese leaders, to avoid ‘rash or hasty political reaction’

Increased statistical evaluation will pinpoint the educational ‘treatments’ that work, says Yidan prizewinner

Long-running investigation into David Latchman’s UCL laboratory finds evidence of deliberate research misconduct, but concludes he was unaware of it

Societies must ‘regain control’ over gene editing technology, says expert

Sponsors that do not meet rules should have ethical approval for future experiments withheld, says Science and Technology Committee

Strathclyde education lecturer calls for other academics to speak out

Legal experts say EU’s data protection laws could ‘hamper research progress’ between two regions

German academics have uncovered thousands of suspected abusers in a landmark project. But should they have had a freer hand?

Thirty-two academic institutions have so far failed to report any of their trial data in accordance with new European Union rules

A move to combat India’s love affair with predatory journals is an encouraging sign – even if it took a newspaper exposé to prompt it, says Pushkar

Since 2011, dozens of institutions have sworn not to undertake military-related research, but the country is now calling on academics to strengthen its defences

Controversial companies are pouring millions into academic research – including on how the industry should be regulated

Findings suggest markets could be used to help prioritise which experiments need repeating most urgently 

Scientists wouldn’t cause unnecessary suffering to humans or animals, so why are they so careless with numbers, asks biostatistician

Immersive ethnographic research often produces gripping accounts of life on the edge, but verifying such work can be problematic. Matthew Reisz examines how ethnographers can produce work that is both credible and robust

Cutting partner labs out of awarded grant budgets is a common but destructive phenomenon in modern academia, says Anne Carpenter

Experts are out of fashion with today’s political vanguard, but fraudulent research risks further undermining science, says THE’s Asia-Pacific editor John Ross

Study suggests reproducibility crisis may not be limited to psychology and biomedicine

Investigation discovers 400,000 researchers worldwide have used ‘pseudoscientific’ journals

Investigation into Irina Stancheva confirms five cases of misconduct, but former lecturer denies manipulating data

The entanglement of the university and tech worlds faces increased scrutiny following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Could joint positions in industry and academia offer a workable and ethically defensible way forward? David Matthews reports

Academic questions whether new committee should be hosted by UK Research and Innovation

Information Commissioner’s Office expresses concern about academics using data gathered for research purposes for commercial gain

Commons Science and Technology Committee expresses concerns that use of non-disclosure agreements could allow errant scholars to reoffend elsewhere

Campaigners fear a huge increase in EU military research spending will lead to development of autonomous weapons

Academics establish deal with social network that will allow ‘insider’ scholars to filter data given to researchers

NAS calls for US lawmakers to bring change also brings warning that crisis talk may ultimately ‘stifle frontier discoveries’

Emma Briant defends actions over exchanges with key figures from Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica parent

Despite errors exaggerating results by factor of 10, Adam Perkins says findings remain ‘statistically significant’

The Cambridge Analytica controversy flags up the ethical perils of research with Big Data – especially when it has commercial potential, says John Holmwood 

Robotics experts cancel boycott after KAIST denies developing autonomous weapons

‘If we want to do more things for society, we can’t do it by working more than 60 or 70 hours a week,’ Rolf Tarrach tells annual conference

Leading academics fear research at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology could be used to develop autonomous armaments

Scientists reject the ‘crisis narrative’ as an inflammatory distraction from bigger issues

University has distanced itself from controversial researcher, but critic argues that it has failed to live up to own ethics code

An expanding research misconduct investigation has stretched its net from the chilly Baltic to an idyllic Queensland island and the grasslands of Saskatchewan

Social scientists’ scepticism about research oversight also relates to the curiously bad press it gets in Western literature, writes Katarzyna Kaczmarska 

Ethics modules ordered after warnings from students’ union that misconduct is on the rise

Mathematicians – and, indeed, other scholars – who cooperate with intelligence agencies face a moral dilemma knowing that their research could well be applied in unethical ways, says Michael Harris

Senior MP says Sam Gyimah's failure to answer questions about research integrity may lead scholars to conclude area is 'not a ministerial priority'

Australian academic accused of copying statements from Wikipedia and other journal articles without attribution in court

Survey finds that most research organisations do not have a policy on use of metrics

New injection of cash for San Francisco Declaration on responsible metrics hopes to move initiative from words to action

The broad trends in AI may be unstoppable, but we must find better ways of directing and regulating them, argues Toronto’s Mark Kingwell

Technology behind Bitcoin is not just hype, say advocates, but could prevent data tampering and improve reproducibility

University of Paris-Saclay will incorporate ethical considerations into research on emerging technologies 

Junior researchers also more likely to feel they have to give credit to colleagues who made minimal contributions

Southern Illinois University under investigation for medical school researcher’s involvement with controversial herpes vaccine trial

Two-thirds of researchers have been slighted by seniors on authorship issues, THE poll reveals

Six out of 10 among 278 anonymous respondents admit to at least one incident of misconduct

Advancing capabilities of stem cells could mean researchers run into legal difficulties once more, European academies warn

UK researcher who travelled to predatory conference in Denmark calls for greater awareness of problem

Why do smart scholars fall for dodgy conferences, asks Jack Grove