Ethics Education and Scientific and Engineering Research: What's Been Learned? What Should Be Done?

随着研究环境变得越来越复杂，机构和研究人员努力确保学生和博士后研究人员的负责任的专业发展。跨学科和国际研究活动增加了挑战，商业利益的参与也越来越多。科学、工程和技术的新发展在社会中复杂的相互作用增加了另一层困难。几十年来，美国国家科学基金会和其他研究机构支持了一些项目，以发展负责任的研究行为和指导活动，调查和评估伦理问题行为和伦理教育的效果。公众和国会对这些项目需求的持续关注表明，现在是审查已取得进展并考虑如何改进这些努力的时机。美国国家科学院将在2008年夏末举办一个为期一天半的研讨会，将对这些目标感兴趣并负责的支持者聚集在一起，研究如何最好地确保这些目标的实现。研讨会规划委员会包括来自相关群体的代表：科学家、工程师、学术管理人员、专业协会和出版物、科学和工程伦理领域的专家以及初级研究人员。为了提供深入的讨论和起草会议，参加人数将限制为25人。研讨会将包括简短的介绍和对问题、资源、选区、需求以及每个选区代表下一步的潜在选择的扩展讨论。它将确定指导和道德教育方面可采用的材料和有前途的做法，研究在研究和教育活动中解决指导和道德教育问题的更有效和更不有效的教学方法，并提供成功方法和结果的例子。讨论将关注专业人员负责任发展的要素，这些要素比伪造和抄袭等研究课题的传统负责任行为更为广泛，强调对学科广度和非医学背景的关注。如何在研究人员和学者之间建立桥梁，以及具有相关科学和工程伦理领域专业知识的研究人员将被讨论，并可能会有积极的例子。将确定研究结果和有效的培训方法、教育材料和实践，并提出向用户传播道德培训工具的建议，以及今后的研究、教育创新和外联活动的建议。最后，研讨会与会者将确定知识库中关于道德教育和指导所有相关选区的道德和相关领域的工作的差距，为规划未来的研究和教育评估提供基础。与会者将起草研讨会讨论摘要；讲习班报告员和各学院的工作人员将利用这些提交的材料编写一份讲习班总体总结，并将在各学院的网站和印刷版上发表，此外还将广泛散发一份关于讲习班总结的宣传小册子。各学院将广泛宣传研讨会总结和相关学院的计划和出版物的可用性。与会者将在不同的专业协会和学术协会会议上谈论这个研讨会，并在他们的通讯和期刊中描述它。研讨会总结的传播将对试图回应新《美国竞争法》HR 2272第7009节中有关道德培训和指导要求的调查人员和机构具有广泛的实际和智力用途。

As research environments grow ever more complex, institutions and investigators struggle to assure responsible professional development for students and postdoctoral researchers. Interdisciplinary and international research activities add to the challenges, as does the increasing involvement of commercial interests. The complicated interactions of new developments in science, engineering, and technology in society add another layer of difficulty. For several decades, NSF and other research agencies have supported projects to develop responsible conduct of research and mentoring activities and to investigate and assess ethically problematic behaviors and the efficacy of ethics education. Continuing attention to the need for these programs from the public and Congress indicates that this is an opportune time to review progress that has been made and consider how to improve these efforts. The National Academies will host a day and a half workshop in late summer 2008, that brings together the constituencies interested in and responsible for these goals, to examine how best to insure that they are met. The workshop planning committee includes representation from the concerned communities: scientists, engineers, academic administrators, professional associations and publications, experts in fields of science and engineering ethics, and junior researchers. In order to provide for intensive discussion and drafting sessions, participation will be limited to 25 persons. The workshop will include brief presentations and extended discussion about the issues, resources, constituencies, needs, and potential options for next steps from representatives of each of the constituencies. It will identify adoptable materials and promising practices in mentoring and ethics education, examining more and less effective pedagogical methods to address mentoring and ethics education in both research and educational activities, and providing examples of successful approaches and outcomes. The discussion will attend to elements of the responsible development of professionals more broadly conceived than traditional responsible conduct of research topics such as falsification and plagiarism, emphasizing attention to disciplinary breadth and non-medical settings. How to build bridges between research investigators and scholars and researchers with expertise in relevant domains of science and engineering ethics will be discussed and positive examples may be helpfully delineated. Research findings and effective training methods, educational materials, and practices will be identified, along with suggestions for dissemination of ethics training tools to users, and for future research, educational innovations, and outreach activities. Finally, the workshop attendees will identify gaps in the knowledge base about what works in ethics education and mentoring in ethics and related areas for all of the relevant constituencies, providing a basis for planning future research and educational assessments.Attendees will draft summaries of the workshop discussions; workshop rapporteurs and Academies' staff will use these submissions to author an overall workshop summary that will be published on the Academies' website as well as in a printed version, and a promotional brochure about the workshop summary will be broadly disseminated. The Academies will publicize the availability of the workshop summary and associated Academies' programs and publications widely. Attendees will talk about the workshop at varied professional society and academic association meetings, and describe it in their newsletters and journals. Dissemination of the workshop summary will be of broad practical and intellectual use to investigators and institutions attempting to respond to the requirements concerning ethics training and mentoring in the new America COMPETES Act HR 2272, Section 7009.