Ethics Newsline®

LONDON
A group of leading U.K. medical editors last week announced a series of ethics guidelines and punitive measures intended to curb research fraud.

The Committee on Public Ethics (COPE) says the guidelines are urgently needed to reform sloppy and fraudulent medical studies, as well as to restore public confidence in research results.

Primary problems cited by the editors include failure to obtain ethics boards’ approval for experiments, failure to fully inform participants of possible risks, bogus data, and plagiarized research, the BBC reported.

While COPE lacks the legal authority to enforce the new guidelines, the group warns that it will pull no punches to clean up the industry.

Possible punishments include blacklisting egregious violators, and publishing editorials detailing researchers’ abuses.