Consider the following potential situation:

You have thought of a new model that you see as leading to a promising new line of research in your field. If you were successful in this project, it would give you significant scientific merit.

To carry out your investigation of the model you need collaborators with some complementary skills. After much ground work you convince a rather prestigious group at another university to collaborate with you in this research. Your PhD funding is still ongoing, but soon to run out. The new collaborators are discussing with you a possibility to get funding in their group after your current funding concludes. You are very excited about the prospect of moving to this new group and new University. The University is much closer to your home town and you already know many people in that town, unlike the town you currently live in.

You are collaboratively writing the grant proposal that would secure your future funding at the collaborator's university, when you receive a journal article to review. The research reported in the article is very exciting, but it if their model works, it would mean your model cannot be right. 

You carefully consider the research methodology and results in the paper you are reviewing and compare that with the model you are developing. You do not see any way to alter your model to circumvent the problems you now see with it and the model you have created looks a lot less probable. 

Question:

  • What, if anything, can and should you say to your would-be collaborators?
  • What are the research ethical considerations (e.g. principles/rules, consequences, virtues) that you think are the most important in this case?


The case study is based on an original case Elysa Koppelman and Caroline Whitbeck found in the Online Ethics Centre

Last modified: Thursday, 14 March 2019, 8:39 AM