Charges Of Misconduct Research Articles

A Rhetorical Analysis of Apologies for Scientific Misconduct: Do They Really Mean It?

Since published acknowledgements of scientific misconduct are a species of image restoration, common strategies for responding publicly to accusations can be expected: from sincere apologies to ritualistic apologies. This study is a rhetorical examination of these strategies as they are reflected in choices in language: it compares the published retractions and letters of apology with the letters that charge misconduct. The letters are examined for any shifts in language between the charge of misconduct and the response to the charge in order to assess whether the apology was sincere or ritualistic. The results indicate that although most authors' published acknowledgments of scientific misconduct seem to minimize culpability by means of the strategic use of language, their resulting ritualistic apologies often still satisfy in some way the accusers' (and thus their community's) concerns.

Economic Implications of Reduced Binge Drinking Among the Military Health System’s TRICARE Prime Plan Beneficiaries

This study examines the economic burden of alcohol misuse to the Department of Defense (DoD) and the benefits of reduced binge drinking among beneficiaries in the DoD's TRICARE Prime plan. Data analyzed include administrative records for approximately 3 million beneficiaries age 18 to 64, DoD's Survey of Health Related Behaviors Among Military Personnel, and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Alcohol misuse among Prime beneficiaries cost the DoD an estimated $1.2 billion in 2006--$425 million in higher medical costs and $745 million in reduced readiness and misconduct charges. Potential annual gross benefits to the DoD of reduced binge drinking are simulated for three scenarios: (1) implementing a comprehensive alcohol screening with referral to brief intervention or treatment by primary care ($87 million/$129 million in short/long-term benefits); (2) increasing the price of alcoholic beverages on military installations by 20% ($75 million/$115 million); and (3) implementing a Web-based education program ($81 million/$123 million).

Exposing poor care is for the greater good of all patients

Margaret Haywood, whose undercover film footage exposed patient mistreatment in an NHS hospital, has been cleared by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of two misconduct charges (news December 3). A third charge will continue to be heard next year. It is a long drawn-out process.

Judicial Administrative Review in Times of Discontent: The Israeli Supreme Court and the Second Palestinian UprisingGuy I. Seidman is a Senior Lecturer, the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya, Israel.

Most democracies offer some form of judicial review of administrative action,1 yet they differ greatly in the remedies available, and in judges' willingness to pass judgement on executive action an...

Shame and Narcissistic Rage in Autogynephilic Transsexualism

One of the most important contributions made by Dreger’s article is her description of the extraordinary lengths to which some of Bailey’s male-to-female (MtF) transsexual opponents went in their attempts to discredit him, his book, and his ideas. By Dreger’s account, their campaign against Bailey continued for at least two years after the publication of The Man Who Would Be Queen (TMWWBQ; Bailey, 2003). Examination of the Internet sites maintained by some of Bailey’s principal transsexual opponents suggests that the campaign against him remains ongoing. The attacks, as described by Dreger, went far beyond writing scathing reviews of TMWWBQ. They included orchestration of charges of professional misconduct against Bailey, filed with Northwestern University and the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation; attempts to turn Bailey’s colleagues against him; attacks directed against Bailey’s children; and efforts to discredit or silence nearly anyone who openly supported him. Dreger’s article suggests that many of Bailey’s opponents intended not only to discredit Bailey’s book, but also to destroy its author. The duration, intensity, and sheer savagery of the campaign waged by many of Bailey’s MtF transsexual opponents is astonishing, especially given that Bailey’s book sold only about 4200 copies and probably would have received little attention, in either its print or Internet versions, were it not for the publicity that his opponents themselves created. One could imagine that Kohut (1972) was describing the campaign conducted by some of Bailey’s MtF transsexual opponents when he wrote the following:

A Matter of Perspective: A Transsexual Woman-Centric Critique of Dreger’s “Scholarly History” of the Bailey Controversy

As someone who is both an academic scientist and a transsexual woman and activist, I would very much welcome a proper historical analysis of the controversy over Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen: one that fully explores the many ethical issues raised by both the book and the backlash that ensued, one that thoughtfully articulates the perspectives of both researchers/gatekeepers and their transsexual subjects/ clients while taking into consideration the institutionalized power that the former group holds over the latter. On paper, Dreger seems well suited for the task given her experience as a science historian, ethicist, and an advocate for sexual minorities in her past work with the Intersex Society of North America. Unfortunately, while Dreger describes her article as a ‘‘scholarly history,’’ it fails in this regard for numerous reasons, several of which I will address here. The first rule of thumb when conducting a historical analysis—particularly one involving any backlash or tipping point event—is to provide the necessary background and the sociopolitical context in which the involved parties are situated within in order to understand the underlying forces that helped to shape the ways in which people reacted and events unfolded. In her lengthy article, Dreger devotes approximately 14 pages to Bailey’s conceiving and writing the book and the subject matter contained therein, 17 pages to describing the backlash against the book (with an overwhelming emphasis on purported attempts by a handful of trans activists to ‘‘ruin’’ Bailey), and 13 pages to clearing Bailey of most of the charges of misconduct that were made against him. In other words, it is primarily a Bailey-centric reading of the controversy. What is conspicuously absent from Dreger’s account is an adequate examination of transsexual women’s realities and perspectives on the issue. Indeed, in her discussion of the backlash, she offers one mere paragraph to address the role that ‘‘the long history of oppression against trans people’’ may have played in fueling trans activists’ responses to the book. And in that paragraph, she offers one brief and vague acknowledgement of the fact that ‘‘trans people...have had their identities unnecessarily medicalized and pathologized’’ without even mentioning that it is Bailey himself (and other psychologists/sexologists) who pathologize us. From a trans perspective, the Bailey controversy is part of a much larger story, one that has unfolded over the last half century, during which time there has been growing resentment and resistance within the trans community to having our identities and realities defined by nontrans researchers/ gatekeepers. Because Dreger overlooks this background and power dynamic, her article is largely an ahistorical ‘‘scholarly history.’’ Dreger glosses over or completely ignores three realities of trans women’s lives that are crucial to appreciate if one wants to truly understand why the backlash against Bailey’s book occurred. First, transsexuals’ gender identities and lived experiences as members of our identified sex are deemed to be less socially and legally valid than those of nontranssexuals (Currah, Juang, & Minter, 2006). Most of the discrimination, demonization, harassment, etc., that trans people face in our daily lives is predicated on this double standard. For this reason, transsexuals are constantly placed into positions where we have to account for, and/or fiercely defend, our gender identities in order to obtain the same rights and respect that nontranssexuals take for granted. Second, transsexual women are routinely sexualized in our culture (Serano, 2007). This can be seen in the media, which sexualizes our motives for transitioning by portraying us as either sexual deceivers who ‘‘prey’’ on unsuspecting heterosexual men, or as men who J. Serano (&) Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley, LSA Building #3200, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA e-mail: serano@berkeley.edu

Dealing with charges of scientific misconduct

Dealing with charges of scientific misconduct

Bubble Fusion Researcher Cleared of Misconduct Charges, but Doubts Linger

Bubble Fusion Researcher Cleared of Misconduct Charges, but Doubts Linger

To IRB or not to IRB?

Improving medical practice begins with the improvement of medical education. In this process, most academic medical faculty assume the dual roles of both teacher and researcher, often without intending to or realizing that they are. With the increased tightening of regulation and supervision of biomedical research in the United States, academic medical institutions and their individual faculty face the daunting regulatory compliance problems that are traditionally associated with clinical and bench research projects. In 2000, as part of a new geriatrics curriculum initiative, one medical school (not the authors' present institution) developed a mentor program that was designed to positively influence students' attitudes about aging. Despite the attempts of faculty to design the curriculum and evaluation process to conform to human subjects regulations, formal allegations of research misconduct were brought against the faculty who were in charge of the curriculum. Even though research that shows that 70% of alleged research misconduct charges result in exoneration, an accusation of misconduct can have serious consequences for faculty including suspension of their project, undergoing an intensive investigation, and potentially making it impossible for the faculty member or institution to apply for future federally supported research funds. The authors wrote this article to serve as a wake-up call for medical educators to become intimately familiar with their own institution's institutional review board process and be proactive in educating themselves and their peers regarding research in medical education.

Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Why Bioethicists Should Seek Informed Consent for Some Case Studies

In 1993, The British Journal of Psychiatry published medical case study that resulted in disciplinary hearing against the authors who had submitted it for publication. While the relationship between eating disorders and self-mutilation is well recognized, Blood-Letting in Bulimia Nervosa reported three cases of novel form of self-mutilation: deliberate blood-letting by venipuncture or insertion of intravenous cannulae. The patients' names or initials were not revealed, but other potentially identifying information was. One of the patients, Ms C, was described as a 26-year-old pre-registration doctor, and important details about the patients' histories and symptoms were included. (1) The case noted, for example, that Ms C states that she was sexually abused by her father between the ages of 4 and 13 but the authenticity of this claim is in doubt. The professional affiliation of the authors was noted, and third physician was acknowledged for allowing the authors to report on one of his patients. The patient identified as Ms. C became aware of the report after its publication and filed complaint against the physicians. A newspaper in the community where the physicians practiced reported on the article, and one of Ms. C's friends recognized her. (2) Ms. C acknowledged giving verbal consent to have certain details of her condition used for research, but she objected that her identity was not disguised and that the facts were inaccurate. The General Medical Council, the body that regulates British doctors, considered charges of serious professional misconduct. The physicians contended that the patient had given verbal consent for the writing of case report and that all the published details were highly pertinent. They were found not guilty. (3) am not aware of similar episode in medical ethics, but such an event would not necessarily have been publicized, and one certainly could have occurred. It would not have been difficult, for example, for neighbors or friends to identify the family involved in the so-called Johns Hopkins case. The film Who Should Survive? One of the Choices on Our Conscience depicts the death of child with Down syndrome and duodenal atresia as the result of his or her parents' decision not to permit surgery. (4) This is an uncommon constellation of malformations affecting only 7.7 out of 100,000 live births. (5) Additionally, the hospital where the infant was cared for is identified several times during the film. Friends and neighbors could have recognized the family in the media coverage of the film's exhibition. (6) The family might have been angered by the way they were portrayed or otherwise harmed. The resident in the film states, I talked to the father several times. He would call and say, 'How are things?' meaning 'Is the kid still alive? (7) The father could have objected to this characterization of his question. Public reaction to the film was generally negative. Katherine McCloskey wrote to The [Baltimore] Sun, To say that I, as young mother, was deeply moved, indeed shocked, by your report is but gross understatement. was even more ashamed to admit to myself that live in society where such an event can occur. (8) If the parents were recognized, they could have been ostracized or explicitly criticized. Bioethicists should take the possibility of inadvertently disclosing the identity of the subject of case study seriously. While they have been concerned to protect the subjects of biomedical research, they have not considered the ethics of their own research. The subjects of case studies could be wronged by the violation of their confidentiality or harmed by stigmatization. Before publishing unique or detailed cases based on actual patients' care, bioethicists should seek the patients' informed consent. Access to Case Study Case study subjects recognizing themselves is relatively new phenomenon caused by the widened circulation of medical information. …

Misconduct Charge Could End Long-Term Bird Study

Misconduct Charge Could End Long-Term Bird Study

Putting the record straight: the importance of documentation.

A nurse from Coventry was recently removed from the national register after failing to keep accurate records for patients in her care. She was found guilty of seven charges of misconduct. The committee heard that she failed to ensure care plans were prepared for several patients covering issues such as diabetes, pain management and dietary needs. On one occasion, she failed to notify staff of a patient's increased risk of haemorrhage following a drug error. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) found the nurse had systematically neglected a basic and crucial duty to keep proper records for the management of patient care.

The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca (review)

Reviewed by: The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca David A. Boruchoff (bio) The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. vii + 204 pp. When the expedition of the Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez set out from Spain on 17 June 1527, it was with the hope that the uncharted territories of the American mainland then known as Florida would yield riches comparable to those recently won by Hernán Cortés in the conquest of New Spain to the south. No one imagined the travails to come or that, of the original group of some six hundred men and ten women, only four of those to go ashore in Florida would survive to recount their experience. The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca is the report ostensibly addressed to Charles I of Spain by one of these four survivors. In it, the expedition's royal treasurer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, relates how he endured nine years of adversity at sea and on land among an ever-shifting array of primarily nomadic native peoples. Hungry, disoriented, and alone from late 1528 to early 1533, later in the company of two equally tattered Spaniards and a black African slave (from mid-1533 to early 1536), he would traverse the southern tier of what is now the United States, making his way by raft and on foot from the Gulf Coast of the Florida Peninsula to south Texas and the upper reaches of the Rio Grande, until at last in the spring of 1536 he came upon a band of Spanish slavers near the Gulf of California, in the present-day Mexican state of Sonora, and was returned to the capital of New Spain, México-Tenochtitlán. By the time Cabeza de Vaca again set foot in the Iberian Peninsula on 9 August 1537, he had spent over 10 years abroad, living in abject conditions in lands and among people totally unknown to his countrymen. Although Cabeza de Vaca's account was first published in Zamora, Spain, in 1542 with the intent of winning recognition for its hero's loyalty and judgment in service to his nation, readers today are more, if not exclusively, familiar with the 1555 edition issued in Valladolid for a broader public. Divided into chapters with titles that help the reader comprehend what is at times a confusing narrative due to its erratic chronology and digressions, [End Page 385] the 1555 edition paired the Relación with Pero Hernández's Comentarios, a critical synopsis of Cabeza de Vaca's disastrous governorship of Río de la Plata from March 1541 to April 1544, when Cabeza de Vaca was arrested, imprisoned, and returned in chains to Spain for trial on charges of criminal misconduct. The notion of unrelenting misfortune occasioned by this pairing of the Relación with the Comentarios was consolidated in modern readers' minds in 1731, when Andrés González de Barcia reissued the 1555 text of the Relación in his collection of Historiadores primitivos de las Indias Occidentales (Early Historians of the Western Indies) under the new title Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. This portentous title—literally the shipwrecks of Cabeza de Vaca; figuratively, the calamities, travails, and setbacks suffered in his journey through life—recurs in nearly all subsequent editions of the Relación, which similarly reproduce the 1555 text, often coupling it, as in Barcia's collection, with other works privileging the exotic or unorthodox occurrences of New World experience, such as the Examen apologético de la histórica narración de los naufragios, peregrinaciones i milagros de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca en las tierras de la Florida, i del Nuevo México (Apologetic Examination of the Historical Account of the Shipwrecks, Peregrinations, and Miracles of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in the Lands of Florida and of New Mexico), by Antonio Ardoino. In a break with this myopic editorial tradition, Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz have sought to present the Relación as Cabeza...

A Placebo for the Pain: A Medico-legal Case Analysis

The objectives of this medico-legal case report are to consider the current status of the use of placebos in pain medicine from clinical, ethical, and legal perspectives. The focus of the analysis is a particular case in which the deceptive use of placebo pain therapy on an adolescent gave rise to professional grievances filed by the patient's mother against the physician who ordered and several nurses who administered the placebo. The medical board declined to take disciplinary action against the physician, and disciplinary action by the board of registered nursing against the nurses was successfully challenged by two of the charged nurses in an administrative review. While there is a growing literature that challenges the need for or justification of the deceptive use of placebos, the practice continues and, as the case under consideration indicates, retains some influential supporters. This is a case report from a community hospital. The patient, referred to here as KC, was an adolescent with migraine headaches. The substitution of a placebo (saline solution) for an opioid analgesic (morphine) was made during KC's treatment. The patient's pain subsided sufficiently following the administration of a placebo to permit his discharge from the hospital. The subsequent discovery by the patient's mother of the deceptive use of a placebo prompted her to file charges of professional misconduct against the treating physician and three nurses with their respective professional licensing boards. The medical board declined to take disciplinary action against the physician, and the disciplinary action by the board of registered nursing was successfully challenged in a ruling by an administrative law judge following a hearing in which expert witnesses took conflicting positions on the acceptability of the deceptive use of a placebo. While there is a developing literature that challenges the ethical legitimacy of the deceptive use of placebos in pain medicine, that literature has yet to be recognized as unqualifiedly setting the standard of care or of professionalism in medicine and nursing.

Nurses have an important role in consent issues.

Autonomy is the fundamental principle underlying consent to treatment. It gives every competent adult the right to decide what may and may not be done to him/her. Any treatment, investigation or deliberate touching carried out without consent may amount to an assault or battery. This could potentially result in a legal action for damages, a criminal charge or allegations of professional misconduct.

Scientific misconduct: present problems and future trends.

Substantial progress in handling scientific misconduct cases has been made since the first cases were investigated by the NIH Office of Scientific Integrity in 1989. The successor Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has simultaneously reduced the backlog of cases and increased the professionalism with which they are handled. However, a spate of lawsuits against universities, particularly those brought under the federal False Claims Act, threatens to undermine the ORI by encouraging use of the courts as an alternate route for resolving claims of research misconduct. Next steps should include establishing a government-wide definition of scientific misconduct, providing immunity from lawsuits for institutions that follow proper procedures in investigating charges of scientific misconduct, and participating in the development of international guidelines for maintaining scientific integrity.

Nurse on misconduct charge stays struck off

Nurse on misconduct charge stays struck off

How to blow the Whistle and still have a career afterwards

Filing charges of scientific misconduct can be a risky and dangerous endeavor. This article presents rules of conduct to follow when considering whether to report perceived misconduct, and a set of step-by-step procedures for responsible whistleblowing that describe how to do so once the decision to report misconduct has been made. This advice is framed within the university setting, and may not apply fully in industrial settings.

The Life and Times of Bishop Louis-Amadeus Rappe by John F. Lyons

The Life and Times of Bishop Louis-Amadeus Rappe. By John E Lyons. (The Au thor, 3175 West 165th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44111. 1997. Pp. xii, 285. $29.95.) The Reverend John E Lyons has published this life and times biography of Louis-Amadeus Rappe, first bishop of Cleveland (1847-1870), appropriately enough during the celebration of the bicentennial of the founding of the city of Cleveland in 1796 and the sesquicentennial of the establishment of the Diocese of Cleveland in 1847. The histories of both are closely intertwined. European immigrant Catholics flocking to the jobs available in such rapidly industrializing cities as Toledo and Cleveland simultaneously fueled the explosive growth of the region and the Catholic Church itself. Recruited by Bishop John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati, Father Rappe journeyed from France in 1840 to become a successful missionary on the northwest Ohio frontier, preaching both religion and temperance. With grave misgivings, Rappe accepted Purcell's offer to become the bishop of the new Cleveland diocese, serving until he resigned in 1870, beset by charges of mismanagement and sexual misconduct. He then went to Vermont, where he was again what he always wished to be, a missionary and temperance advocate, until his death in 1877. Lyons dedicates his study to the late Reverend William A. Jurgens, H.E.D., whose extensive research and writing form a major part of the volume. Lyons relies almost exclusively on diocesan archives in Cleveland, Baltimore, Norwood (Cincinnati), and Burlington (Vermont) and on archival material at the University of Notre Dame and at the Propaganda Fide in Rome. There are fewer than a dozen references to the secondary literature, little of it current and much of it cited improperly. Since there is no bibliography (or index, for that matter), the interested reader will have difficulty locating a particular secondary source. Either ignoring or unaware of the significant scholarship on both the Rappe administration in particular and the American Catholic Church as a whole, Lyons fails to place the events and personalities about whom he feels so deeply in any effective historical or analytical context. He has thus written not an evenhanded life and times biography of Rappe but, rather, a legal brief in which he pictures the bishop as a saintly man destroyed by lying, evil-minded enemies, both lay and cleric. For Lyons, disagreements over such issues as nationality parishes, placement of priests, or the language to be used in services and taught in parochial schools are not legitimate differences of opinion over important issues but selfish, imagined grievances which produced conspiracies, led by plotters (at first Germans but later and especially the Irish led by Father Eugene M. …

Rhetorical subterfuge and “the principle of perfection,” part II: Bob Packwood's senate resignation

Between 1992 and 1995 Senator Bob Packwood engaged in a rhetorical subterfuge in which he admitted, refuted and evaded charges of sexual misconduct. In September of 1995 the Senate Ethics Committee ended the subterfuge with a recommendation to expel Packwood from the Senate for sexual misconduct, job solicitations, and evidence tampering. This essay examines Packwood's response to this recommendation as a second rhetorical subterfuge that unfolds in fragmented yet progressive stages of refutation, diversion and apology. The essay extends previous research on rhetorical subterfuge and hierarchal psychosis by demonstrating how Packwood's fragmented discourse reflects a conceptual whole that functions strategically to dissolve the controversy.