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Improving the trustworthiness, usefulness, and ethics of biomedical research through an innovative and comprehensive institutional initiative.

ABSTRACT: The reproducibility crisis triggered worldwide initiatives to improve rigor, reproducibility, and transparency in biomedical research. There are many examples of scientists, journals, and funding agencies adopting responsible research practices. The QUEST (Quality-Ethics-Open Science-Translation) Center offers a unique opportunity to examine the role of institutions. The Berlin Institute of Health founded QUEST to increase the likelihood that research conducted at this large academic medical center would be trustworthy, useful for scientists and society, and ethical. QUEST researchers perform "science of science" studies to understand problems with standard practices and develop targeted solutions. The staff work with institutional leadership and local scientists to incentivize and support responsible practices in research, funding, and hiring. Some activities described in this paper focus on the institution, whereas others may benefit the national and international scientific community. Our experience, approaches, and recommendations will be informative for faculty leadership, administrators, and researchers interested in improving scientific practice.

SUBMITTER: Strech D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7012388 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Improving the trustworthiness, usefulness, and ethics of biomedical research through an innovative and comprehensive institutional initiative.

Strech Daniel D Weissgerber Tracey T Dirnagl Ulrich U

PLoS biology 20200211 2

The reproducibility crisis triggered worldwide initiatives to improve rigor, reproducibility, and transparency in biomedical research. There are many examples of scientists, journals, and funding agencies adopting responsible research practices. The QUEST (Quality-Ethics-Open Science-Translation) Center offers a unique opportunity to examine the role of institutions. The Berlin Institute of Health founded QUEST to increase the likelihood that research conducted at this large academic medical cen ...[more]

PMID: 32045410

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Project description:BackgroundOur human societies and certainly also (bio) medicine are more and more permeated with technology. There seems to be an increasing awareness among bioethicists that an effective and comprehensive approach to ethically guide these emerging biomedical innovations into society is needed. Such an approach has not been spelled out yet for bioethics, while there are frequent calls for ethical guidance of biomedical innovation, also by biomedical researchers themselves. New and emerging biotechnologies require anticipation of possible effects and implications, meaning the scope is not evaluative after a technology has been fully developed or about hypothetical technologies, but real-time for a real biotechnology.Main textIn this paper we aim to substantiate and discuss six ingredients that we increasingly see adopted by ethicists and that together constitute "ethics parallel research". This approach allows to fulfil two aims: guiding the development process of technologies in biomedicine and providing input for the normative evaluation of such technologies. The six ingredients of ethics parallel research are: (1) disentangling wicked problems, (2) upstream or midstream ethical analysis, (3) ethics from within, (4) inclusion of empirical research, (5) public participation and (6) mapping societal impacts, including hard and soft impacts. We will draw on gene editing, organoid technology and artificial intelligence as examples to illustrate these six ingredients.ConclusionEthics parallel research brings together these ingredients to ethically analyse and proactively or parallel guide technological development. It widens the roles and judgements from the ethicist to a more anticipatory and constructively guiding role. Ethics parallel research is characterised by a constructive, rather than a purely critical perspective, it focusses on developing best-practices rather than outlining worst practice, and draws on insights from social sciences and philosophy of technology.

Project description:BackgroundThere is a strong and growing interest in biomedical ethics and medical humanities (BEMH) within medical education for facilitating key components of medical professionalism and ethics, clinical communication and observational skills, and self-care and reflective practices. Consequently, United States (US) medical institutions have begun to incorporate BEMH through formal Scholarly Concentrations (SCs). This is the first study to examine the impact of a US BEMH SC, from student experience in medical school to post-graduate development, as perceived by graduate physicians.MethodsGraduated students who participated in the BEMH SC or did extensive BEMH research prior to the BEMH SC's establishment (n = 57) were sampled for maximum variation across graduating years. In telephone surveys and interviews, participants discussed the perceived impact of the BEMH SC on (a.) student experience during medical school and (b.) post-graduate development. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and de-identified. The authors iteratively generated a codebook; two raters coded independently, adjudicated codes, and completed inter-rater reliability (IRR) tests. The authors subsequently conducted a team-based thematic analysis, identifying emergent themes.ResultsNineteen BEMH graduates were interviewed. Results were analyzed according to (a.) student experience and (b.) post-graduate development. Overall, respondents perceived impacts in reinforcing knowledge and skills in clinical ethics; solidifying self-care and reflective practices; refining a sense of professional identity and integrity for ethically challenging situations; and promoting student skills, productivity, and later careers involving BEMH.ConclusionA comprehensive US BEMH SC achieved the purported aims of BEMH in medical education, with graduate physicians perceiving persisting effects into clinical practice. Furthermore, the structure and format of a SC may offer additional advantages in promoting student scholarly skill and productivity, career development, and professional identity formation-core competencies identified across clinical training and ethics programs. Our findings indicate that a BEMH SC is effective in achieving a range of desired immediate and post-graduate effects and represent a particularly promising venue for BEMH in medical education. We believe these findings to be of critical significance to medical educators and administrators when considering how best to incorporate BEMH into SCs and medical curricula.

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Improving the trustworthiness, usefulness, and ethics of biomedical research through an innovative and comprehensive institutional initiative.

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Improving the trustworthiness, usefulness, and ethics of biomedical research through an innovative and comprehensive institutional initiative.

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