Responsibility in the Conduct of Quantitative Sciences: Preparing Future Practitioners and Certifying Professionals

• Activity Number: 518
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 6, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Rochelle E. Tractenberg*+ and Kevin T. FitzGerald
• Companies: Georgetown University and Georgetown University Medical Center
• Keywords: ethics training ; mentorship ; professional practice ; ASA Guidelines for Professional Practice

Abstract

The American Statistical Association (ASA) Ethical Guidelines (ASA, 1999, http://www.amstat.org/committees/ethics/) address eight general topic areas: Professionalism; Responsibilities to Funders, Clients, and Employers; Responsibilities in Publications and Testimony; Responsibilities to Research Subjects; Responsibilities to Research Team Colleagues; Responsibilities to Other Statisticians or Statistical Practitioners; Responsibilities Regarding Allegations of Misconduct; and Responsibilities of (those) Employing Statistical Practitioners. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a very similar list with nine topics (NIH NOT-OD-10-019; NIH, 2009). Both are lists of factual information with which trainees should become familiar. However, both are also static - they neither support nor suggest increasing or changing responsibility over a career. That is, mentors and instructors in the responsible conduct of research are indistinguishable from trainees; technically at the end of a course (whether it is 1 hour, week or semester long) the trainee has as much information as the instructor. Moreover, as new areas of concern arise, additional topical training is required -but rarely completed.

Although the NIH requires that all trainees who receive NIH funding also receive training in the responsible conduct of research, to integrate the ASA Guidelines for Ethical Statistical Practice into training, two things are needed: 1. A semester course syllabus; and, 2. A method of documenting the qualifications of instructors to serve as mentors for such training. We describe both in this paper.