Reports from the Senior Vice President

The road to success in research and scholarship must be paved with integrity and responsibility: not just good intentions

Address by Eva J. Pell to the Graduate School Convocation, August 2001

Today I speak to you—writers and engineers, artists and life scientists, physicists and social scientists. All of you have something in common—you all are searching for answers—some to complex tangible questions, others to those more ethereal.

At this moment you cannot imagine that you might ever seek a short cut—falsify data, pour a chemical down the drain, neglect to report an isotope spill, or conduct an experiment with animals or collect human subject data for which you neglected to get a protocol approved. Today, I hope none of you could conceive of engaging in such behavior—almost none of you ever will. But some of you will experience pressure—an advisor who needs data from your experiment for a proposal he or she is writing and you don't want to let your advisor down; a commitment you made to present a poster at a meeting months before—now with 2 weeks left you simply don't have time to wait for the institutional review board to grant you permission; you have to finish up before your funding runs out; you have a job to go to and you just have to get that degree wrapped up; or maybe you are just exhausted and stretched to the limit physically and emotionally. While many of you will find yourselves under some form of pressure—maybe in one of the forms described—very few will actually ever be guilty of a breach of research or scholarly integrity, deliberately or inadvertently.

Human subject research has unfortunately received a great deal of attention in the last few years. You may have read of the young man who died as the result of an experimental drug therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. A serious conflict of interest was uncovered as the physician/researcher involved in the study had also invested in the company that was studying the drug. A second case arose just a few months ago in which a healthy young woman died at Johns Hopkins Medical Center after engaging in an experimental protocol for studying asthma. In this case the University's protocol of informed consent was found to be insufficient.

We are entrusted to conduct experiments with animals, to collect human subject data of all kinds—everything from blood samples, to observations of motor coordination and behavior, to demographic information—-and we work in the environment using toxic chemicals of all sorts. At Penn State the Office of Regulatory Compliance is responsible for providing training programs for human subject research, and animal care and use. Before you can work with human subjects you will be required to submit a protocol to the Institutional Review Board or IRB and you will also need to complete an on-line training course and pass an examination certifying your eligibility to work with human subjects. As stated on our Web site, the IRB is responsible for reviewing and approving protocol, and requiring modifications in, or withholding approval of research involving human subjects. When you have a protocol approved, you may then conduct your research. Should a problem arise, for example, a subject is hurt during an experiment, the IRB will review the problem and determine whether the protocol was followed accurately, and whether the protocol was, in fact, optimal. If any infractions occurred or problems are identified, the IRB is empowered to take corrective action. This could include suspension of privileges of an investigator.

Those of you conducting social science research may be perplexed by any reason that you would have to submit a protocol to the IRB. After all what real harm can come from survey research? Well, imagine this seemingly innocent situation. A graduate student completed a survey-based research project with subjects who were defined as deviant based on time spent in the judicial system. Some time later, a new graduate student comes along and discusses a project that he has initiated which coincidentally also focuses on deviant populations, although the study itself is asking entirely different questions. The senior graduate student shares with the junior graduate student her list of subjects to help save this new student time in recruiting subjects. When the new student calls the prospective subjects to see if they want to become involved in this new study, one of the subjects becomes upset recognizing that her identity has been shared beyond the scope for which permission was granted. No one ever laid a finger on this subject and yet she was hurt.

Another example derives from a case in which an individual had an IRB protocol approved to videotape activities at a fraternity. The use of the tapes for interpretation and analysis of behavior was approved. However, the videotapes were not to be shared with anyone outside of the research project. The study was completed and the paper written up for presentation at a national conference, to be held at a location remote from State College, Pennsylvania. The researcher presented the paper and showed a small clip from the videotape to make a point. After all this researcher was far away from State College, who would know? Well someone in the audience recognized a face on that clip and when it was reported back to the individual involved he was not happy. It almost resulted in a lawsuit. Fortunately, the situation was resolved, but it speaks to a lack of respect, not only for the rules, but also for the individuals who agreed to participate in the study.

Anyone working with animals also must complete the basic training at least once while at Penn State. Just as with human subjects, both training and testing for certification is provided on line. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, known as IACUC, approves all protocol for use of animals in any University activities (including research, teaching, demonstration, etc.). Penn State also enjoys accreditation by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International called AAALAC. At the recent site visit for accreditation, we were viewed as an excellent facility. The committee noted that some of our facilities were old but that both the facilities and the animals were very well cared for. We recognize that there is research which can only be conducted with vertebrate animals, and we oversee work with all vertebrate animals: laboratory, wildlife, and agricultural species. It is critical that we recognize when such experiments are essential. In such cases the experiments must be designed in ways that respect the animals and the environment in which they are housed, and that ensure minimized pain and suffering. Not too long ago, we closed a building that housed live fish because the rooms where the fish were being maintained were in poor condition -plaster was falling from the ceiling, racks that housed the fish were rusty, and ventilation was poor. For those of you who plan to conduct research with animals, the training will familiarize you with all the details you need to provide an acceptable level of animal care. Just as in the case of the IRBs, the IACUCs are responsible for approving protocols and insuring that any infractions are evaluated and dealt with appropriately.

Problems arise when people do not stop to think about the implications of their actions; or are simply unaware of the rules. The Office for Regulatory Compliance received a call from a student who stated that a faculty member had a dog in a classroom. The student was afraid of dogs-which is why she called. Our staff made some inquiries and as it turned out, the dog belonged to the faculty member. He brought the dog to class to train it to be a "therapy dog" for use in conflict mediation. A "therapy dog" is used to diffuse emotionally difficult or charged situations when individuals are involved in a therapeutic setting. The faculty member did not think (or realize) that he needed to have approval from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee for working with his own animal (and he was not planning to do invasive procedures). Our director met with the faculty member regarding the project and explained that the IACUC was responsible for any activity involving animals conducted under Penn State's auspices. Our director worked with the faculty member to develop an IACUC protocol for review and after several revisions the protocol was approved. However, this meant that many issues had to be addressed, including: ensuring that the dog would have access to fresh water and food, would have appropriate time and place for rest, and would not be mistreated by students; and that issues would be resolved around the perceptions of students in the classroom who may have a fear of dogs. The protocol has been successfully operating for three years, without incident.

While we focus on humans and animals, we must be no less vigilant in the care of our environment. Our environment encompasses the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil that helps sustain us. Some of you will work with radioisotopes and many of you will work with a variety of chemicals, from pesticides to organic chemicals to toxic metals. The Department of Environmental Health and Safety provides training needed to work with radioisotopes, and offers a variety of programs associated with biological and chemical safety in the laboratory. Similarly, the College of Agricultural Sciences oversees pesticide training.

None of these courses are exciting, and everyone in this hall can master the material easily; it is not rocket science, but it is important to take it seriously. Let me tell you a true story that I experienced years ago. My research area deals with the effects of the air pollutant ozone on plants. We had a couple of laboratories in a multi-purpose building where other scientists worked in unrelated areas and we had limited knowledge of what they did. One day, one of the graduate students in my group was treating plants with ozone in a controlled environment chamber. All of a sudden, the ozone levels shot up from the controlled level of 0.15 ppm to some huge number above 50 ppm. The student panicked and shut off the ozone generator and the valve on the oxygen tank; at those levels she knew the plants would have been fried. Since the chamber received charcoal filtered air and had multiple air exchanges each hour, the levels should have returned to background in a matter of minutes. But an hour passed and the level was still at 50ppm. Having a nose that is calibrated for ozone, I decided to check. I went into the chamber briefly and detected no ozone. At 50 ppm my nose would have burned severely; I can easily smell 0.06 ppm ozone. We were perplexed, but assumed the analyzer was malfunctioning. We did not have another analyzer easily available at that time. (This was early in my career before I had back-up equipment). We planned to send the analyzer back to the manufacturer in a few days and left the equipment running. Interestingly, after 24 hours the analyzer was again reading background. About a week later, one of the students came into my office with an unusual report. He had been talking to a student in one of these adjoining labs I spoke of earlier; it happened to be an engineering lab. The engineering student had casually mentioned to the graduate student in my laboratory that a week ago he had broken a 50 cc manometer (manometers are glass tubes designed to measure pressure) and was wondering how to clean up the mercury that had spilled out—ONE WEEK LATER. To give you an idea of how much 50 cc of mercury is, it is 100 times the amount of mercury in the thermometer you may have in your medicine cabinet. Now mercury, like water, evaporates: It goes from the liquid state, the state it exists in the manometer, to the gaseous state at room temperature. Thus, as soon as the mercury left the manometer and hit the floor, it began to vaporize. The other important feature of mercury is that it splatters as it hits the ground, forming lots of little beads. Well, mercury is not something you want to be breathing in, as it is a neurotoxin. So I called the Department of Environmental Health and Safety here on campus, and they came over and helped clean up this accident. In the process of cleaning up the mercury, guess what happened? You got it, the ozone monitor started to act up again. I called the manufacturer and asked if mercury could interfere with the proper functioning of the analyzer? Yes, it certainly could, they replied. For months after this episode, every time anyone swept up in the lab where the manometer had been broken, our ozone monitor would act up a bit, indicating that there were still some traces of mercury out there that were being exposed to the air. As a postscript, the graduate students in my lab all had their blood checked and fortunately, the mercury levels were within background levels. The moral of the story is: if you have an accident be responsible; have enough knowledge of what you are working with to know the perils; but regardless never try and cover up. You cannot protect yourself, those around you or the environment that way.

Successfully completing the courses I referred to earlier will earn you the privilege to conduct your research and achieve your degree but please take some time to consider why these rules are there. A cynical answer is "to protect against litigation." While there may be some truth to this, there is a more important reason, we are entrusted with the care of people, of animals and of our environment—and we must treat this responsibility with the utmost respect.

Lastly, let's talk about research integrity in the broadest sense. We all know that we do not plagiarize. We learn that at a very early age. And yet people do it. Students get to graduate school and some think that if you cite a reference you can reproduce it verbatim without quotations. Not so. Some think that they can find some obscure material, lift it directly from the source without attribution, and no one will ever know. And unfortunately people are using the Web more and more, and it can be tempting to simply copy a couple of sentences or more and paste them into a document. Unfortunately, this type of practice does occur with more frequency than we would like to think. As a result, there are programs with names like www.howoriginal.com, www.findsame.com and www.plagiarism.org, which take students' papers in electronic format and put them through plagiarism tests. These are rare occurrences among graduate students, but sadly they do happen. Ultimately, the fear of being caught cannot be the motivation for being original. Rather you must continue to be propelled by the motivation that brought you here in the first place.

Research misconduct takes many forms and Penn State, unfortunately, is not immune to occasional problems of a serious nature. This past year we discovered that a recent doctoral recipient had fabricated some genetic sequence data in her dissertation. An investigation found this individual guilty, and she was stripped of the Ph.D. awarded just a year earlier. Unfortunately, several students who succeeded this individual in the laboratory wasted a year trying to repeat the data reported by this person, trying to build on an empty shell. Their time could not be recovered, even though the individual was punished. Over the years there are occasional cases that are so extreme that they become legend. In the 1970s a promising young scientist at Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Institute in New York City was studying skin grafting. He reported that he was able successfully to graft the skin from a black mouse onto a white mouse. The scientific implications at that time were enormous. Some time later it came out that this investigator had actually painted portions of the white mouse's skin black. The investigator's career was destroyed, Sloan Kettering got a black mark, no pun intended, and other researchers who began building on this exciting discovery also had to back pedal because they were building on a false base. What could have possessed either of these individuals to so blatantly fabricate data? We can only imagine; in cases like these the truth will eventually come out. Both of these cases were professional tragedies for the individuals, but the punishment meted out should not be the reason to follow the rules. The best reasons are based upon respect for your research and for the subjects of your research, and for love of the truth.

The quest for insight is never ending; if ever achieved the moment is fleeting. I remember a seminar I attended as a graduate student. A biochemistry professor talked about insight and described pondering a complex problem in this way—"...once in a great while," he said, "the door opens, for a brief moment the light shines in, and then the door slams shut again." In my life as a researcher I have enjoyed that rush of insight just a few times. It is totally exhilarating, providing momentum that can carry you for a long time, even after your pages turn two-dimensional again. There are no short cuts to experiencing truth and no road map to get there. Only the truth can allow you those encounters with insight, and never forget—that is the reason you signed on to this particular journey.