When scholars express concern about trust in science, they often focus on whether the public trusts research findings. This study explores a different dimension of trust and examines whether and how frequently researchers misrepresent their research accomplishments when applying for a faculty position. We collected all of the vitae submitted for faculty positions at a large research university for 1 year and reviewed a 10% sample for accuracy. Of the 180 applicants whose vitae we analyzed, 141 (78%) claimed to have at least one publication, and 79 of these 141 (56%) listed at least one publication that was unverifiable or inaccurate in a self-promoting way. We discuss the nature and implications of our findings, and suggest best practices for both applicants and search committees in presenting and reviewing vitae.
AbstractPublic trust in government agencies plays an important role in the formation of public opinion about public policy issues. However, the association between public trust in regulatory agencies and public support for policy development in emergent biotechnologies such as gene drive is not well understood. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are tasked with coordinating and regulating biotechnology. Drawing on past literature, this study examines how public trust in these federal agencies is associated with public opinion on various options for gene drive policy. Using data from a nationally representative public opinion survey (n = 1220) conducted in 2021, our statistical analyses show that respondents who report higher levels of trust in regulatory agencies are more likely to support policy proposals that promote gene drive research and ultimately, may lead to regulatory policies that allow gene drive to be researched and employed to manage agricultural pests, establishing a pathway for scientists, developers, producers, and consumers alike to realize the benefits of this technology.
The landscape in research ethics has changed significantly in Latin America and the Caribbean over the past two decades. Research ethics has gone from being a largely foreign concept and unfamiliar practice to an integral and growing feature of regional health research systems. Four bioethics training programs have been funded by the Fogarty International Center (FIC) in this region in the past 12 years. Overall, they have contributed significantly to changing the face of research ethics through the creation of locally relevant training materials and courses (including distance learning), academic publications, workshops, and conferences in Spanish, and strengthening ethics review committees and national systems of governance. This paper outlines their achievements and challenges, and reflects on current regional needs and what the future may hold for research ethics and bioethics training in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The development of research training opportunities for investigators from the untapped pool of traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic groups has gained intense interest at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The significant and persistent disparity in the likelihood of R01 funding between African American and Whites was highlighted in the groundbreaking 2011 report, Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards. Disparities in funding success were also shown to exist at the institutional level, as 30 institutions receive a disproportionate share of federal research funding. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have a dual commitment to education and research; however, the teaching loads at HBCUs may present challenges for research-oriented faculty. Few research training and mentoring programs have been specifically designed for this group.During 2015 and 2016, we held three conversation cafés with 77 participants in Jackson, Mississippi and Baltimore, Maryland. The purpose of this article is to describe findings from these conversation cafés regarding barriers and facilitators to building robust research careers at HBCUs, and to illustrate how these data were used to adapt the conceptual framework for the NHLBI-funded Obesity Health Disparities (OHD) PRIDE program. Identified barriers included teaching and advising loads, infrastructures, and lack of research mentors on campus. The benefit of incorporating research into classroom teaching was a noted facilitator. Ethn Dis. 2020;30(1):83-90; doi:10.18865/ed.30.1.83
BACKGROUND: Alcohol consumption has been linked with injuries through motor vehicle crashes, falls, drowning, fires and burns, and violence. In the US, half of the estimated 100,000 deaths attributed to alcohol each year are due to intentional and unintentional injuries. The identification of effective interventions for the reduction of unintentional and intentional injuries due to problem drinking is, therefore, an important public health goal. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effect of interventions for problem drinking on subsequent injury risk. SEARCH METHODS: We searched 12 twelve computerized databases: MEDLINE (1966 to 2002), EMBASE (1982 to 2002), CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library 2002, Issue 2), PsycINFO (1967 to 2002), CINAHL (1982 to10/96), ERIC (1966 to12/96), Dissertation Abstracts International (1861 to11/96), IBSS (1961 to 2002), ISTP (1982 to 2002) and three specialized transportation databases (Transport 1988 to 2002/03). Bibliographies of relevant trials were searched and authors were contacted. Government agencies were also contacted for further information and grey literature. Most of the electronic and bibliographic database searches were last run in May 2002. SELECTION CRITERIA: Randomized controlled trials of interventions among participants with problem drinking, which are intended to reduce alcohol consumption or to prevent injuries or their antecedents, and which measured injury‐related outcomes. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two authors extracted data on participants, interventions, follow‐up, allocation concealment, and outcomes, and independently rated allocation concealment quality. MAIN RESULTS: Of 23 eligible trials identified, 22 had been completed and 17 provided results for relevant outcomes. Completed trials comparing interventions for problem drinking to no intervention reported reduced motor‐vehicle crashes and related injuries, falls, suicide attempts, domestic violence, assaults and child abuse, alcohol‐related injuries and injury emergency visits, hospitalizations and deaths. ...
Introduction: The current hypercompetitive extramural funding environment in the United States emphasizes the critical need for effective research training programs that focus not only on grantsmanship, but on skill development across the full range of research activities, culminating in writing research results for publication. Using Writing Accountability Groups (WAG), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded Obesity Health Disparities (OHD) PRIDE is one of the few research training and mentoring programs that places an equal focus on scientific writing and grant writing. This article reports on the utility of WAGs for OHD PRIDE mentees.Method: Participants included 14 of 26 individuals who were fellows in the OHD PRIDE research training and mentoring program. A typical WAG has between four and eight members who meet for one hour each week over a 10-week period and commit a priori to attend at least 70% of the sessions. Summary statistics were produced to characterize number of peer-reviewed publications, grants, years in academic rank, and category of current academic rank, barriers to frequency of writing, and duration of writing. Results from pre- and post-WAG surveys were compared to determine the overall impact of the WAG. The study period discussed in this article took place between January and December 2017 and included data from three 10-week cycles beginning in February, May, and September.Results: Fifty-three percent of OHD PRIDE participants successfully completed at least one 10-week WAG cycle. The WAGs did not have a statistically significant impact on either the frequency of writing or the duration of writing. However, the majority of the participants who successfully completed at least one WAG cycle reported that they either maintained or increased their frequency or duration of writing.Conclusion: By providing a structured approach to developing and/or enhancing a practice of consistent writing, time management skills, and collaborative relationships, the WAG has promise for enhancing scientific writing skills for many trainees and early-career faculty. Longer term follow-up is needed to more fully assess the potential impact of WAGs. Ethn Dis. 2020;30(2):295- 304; doi:10.18865/ed.30.2.295
Participants' understanding of key elements of a research protocol is essential to their ethical enrollment in the study. Ongoing participation should be based on continued comprehension and consent, which presumes a high degree of recall. Many obstacles can prevent full understanding of information about the research protocol. This study's aim was to evaluate the comprehension and 1-day recall of the elements of informed consent by the parents/guardians of children enrolled in a clinical study in Mozambique. We developed a 10-question test based on the study's informed consent document. We asked participants to answer questions shortly after being read the informed consent document and again the following day. Participants who did not demonstrate good or reasonable understanding at enrollment were provided the information again as a refresher. Overall high rates of initial comprehension demonstrate that attention to the informed consent process can result in Mozambicans' informed, voluntary participation in clinical trials.
<p>Mentoring has been consistently identified as an important element for career advancement in many biomedical and health professional disciplines and has been found to be critical for success and promotion in academic settings. Early-career faculty from groups underrepresented in biomedical research, however, are less likely to have mentors, and in general, receive less mentoring than their majority-group peers, particularly among those employed in teaching-intensive institutions. This article describes Obesity Health Disparities (OHD) PRIDE, a theoretically and conceptually based research training and mentoring program designed for early-career faculty who trained or are employed at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). <em></em></p><p><em>Ethn Dis. </em>2018;28(2):115-122; doi:10.18865/ed.28.2.115. </p>
Background: African American children and adolescents make up a disproportionately large segment of those classified as overweight and obese. The purpose of this study was to examine social and behavioral factors associated with accelerated accumulation of weight and adiposity among this group.Methods: The data for this cross-sectional study were drawn from the Jackson Heart KIDS Pilot Study – an offspring cohort study comprising 12- to 19-year-old descendants of Jackson Heart Study participants (N=212). Body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference were the outcomes of interest. Daily hassles, fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, television watching, parent/grandparent weight status and participant birth weight, age and sex were the independent variables included in the analyses.Results: Males and females were equally represented in the study and the mean BMI and waist circumference for adolescents in the study was 25.81±7.78 kg/m2 and 83.91 ± 19.81 cm, respectively. Fully adjusted linear regression models for the total sample produced results indicating that age, television viewing, weight control, and parental weight status were positively associated with BMI and waist circumference, respectively. Findings from sex-stratified models for BMI and waist circumference indicated that the significance of coefficients for age, television viewing, and parent/grandparent weight status varied by sex.Conclusions: Knowledge is limited about how sex or gender interact with social and behavioral factors to influence African Americans' health and additional studies are needed to specify how these factors interact to accelerate weight gain and adipose tissue accumulation over the life course.Ethn Dis. 2021;31(3):453-460; doi:10.18865/ed.31.3.453
AbstractWith limited understanding of most new biotechnologies, how do citizens form their opinion and what factors influence their attitudes about these innovations? In this study, we use gene drive biotechnology in agricultural pest management as an example and theoretically propose that given low levels of knowledge and awareness, citizens' acceptance of, or opposition to, gene drive is significantly shaped by two predisposition factors: individuals' general orientation toward science and technology, and their specific benefit‐risk assessment frame. Empirically, we employ data collected from a recent US nationally representative public opinion survey (N = 1220) and conduct statistical analyses to test the hypotheses derived from our theoretical expectations. Our statistical analyses, based on various model specifications and controlling for individual‐level covariates and state‐fixed effects, show that citizens with a more favorable general orientation toward science and technology are more likely to accept gene drive. Our data analyses also demonstrate that citizens' specific gene drive assessment frame—consisting of a potential benefit dimension and a potential risk dimension, significantly shapes their attitudes as well—specifically, people emphasizing more on the benefit dimension are more likely to accept gene drive, whereas those who place more importance on the risk dimension tend to oppose it. We discuss contributions of our study and make suggestions for future research in the conclusion.
Community engagement is increasingly becoming an integral part of research. "Community-engaged research" (CEnR) introduces new stakeholders as well as unique challenges to the protection of participants and the integrity of the research process. We—a group of representatives of CTSA-funded institutions and others who share expertise in research ethics and CEnR—have identified gaps in the literature regarding (1) ethical issues unique to CEnR; (2) the particular instructional needs of academic investigators, community research partners, and IRB members; and (3) best practices for teaching research ethics. This paper presents what we know, as well as what we still need to learn, in order to develop quality research ethics educational materials tailored to the full range of stakeholder groups in CEnR.
