Feature Channels: Ethics and Research Methods

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Seeking ways to change cancer patients’ perceptions and negative attitudes towards clinical trials participation, researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center conducted a study offering two different kinds of intervention to two groups of adults with cancer who had not previously been asked to participate in clinical trials. They found a multimedia psychoeducational intervention to be more effective in changing patients’ perceptions and negative attitudes toward clinical trials than standard educational literature.

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According to some estimates, the average corporate email user sends 112 emails every day. About one out of every seven of those messages, says a new study from Georgia Tech, can be called gossip. Assistant Professor Eric Gilbert of the School of Interactive Computing examined hundreds of thousands of emails from the former Enron corporation and found that 14.7 percent of the emails qualify as office scuttlebutt.

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A growing concern with fraud and misconduct in published drug studies has led researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research to investigate the extent and reasons for retractions in the research.

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Patient care nationwide may be affected when research on medications contain only ‘good news’ – especially when the research is industry-funded.

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Johns Hopkins University scholar, lawyer and human rights advocate Leonard Rubenstein is attending the 65th session of the World Health Assembly this week, pushing for a resolution to document attacks on health care workers in conflict zones such as Syria and Bahrain. Recent escalation of such attacks has raised humanitarian concern.

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Patients see potential benefits from direct-to-consumer genetic testing, but are also concerned about how test results will be used, and generally are unwilling to pay more than $10 or $20 for them.

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The Medical Publishing Insights and Practices (MPIP) initiative and its co-sponsors recently collaborated with journal editors to characterize the persistent and perceived credibility gap in reporting industry-sponsored research and to identify potential approaches to resolve it. This unique round table, hosted by MPIP, reached consensus on Ten Recommendations for Closing the Credibility Gap in Reporting Industry-Sponsored Clinical Research as reported in the May issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

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Guidelines adopted by Federation of State Medical Boards address growing use of social media and networking sites by physicians in medical practice.

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More health researchers are collaborating with community groups. But ethicists write that programs that educate researchers and community groups about research ethics "fail to meet the needs of all groups."