Bill of Health Blog Symposium: Research Integrity and Trustworthy Science: Challenges & Solutions

We are pleased to host this symposium featuring commentary from participants in the University of Minnesota’s Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences event, “Research Integrity and Trustworthy Science: Challenges and Solutions.”  Below, Susan M. Wolf tees up the issues.  All posts in the series will be available here.

By Susan M. Wolf, JD (Chair, Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences; McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine & Public Policy; Faegre Baker Daniels Professor of Law; Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota)

Trustworthy science is crucial to progress in scientific understanding, patient care, and product development. Yet threats to the integrity of science and to public confidence loom large. Researcher misconduct, inadequate education of new researchers, concerns over the reproducibility and rigor of scientific research, predatory journals that fail to perform thorough peer review, and oversight lapses all constitute significant threats to sound science and public trust.

A 2017 report from the National Academies on Fostering Integrity in Research carefully analyzed “detrimental research practices.” The report called for significant changes in the policies and practices of journals, research institutions, and researchers. Among the proposals was creation of a Research Integrity Advisory Board (RIAB) as an independent nonprofit. Further recommendations called for changes to allow researchers to reproduce results, including archiving datasets and code.

In March 2018, the University of Minnesota responded to the emerging research challenges and solutions by sponsoring a conference on “Research Integrity and Trustworthy Science: Challenges and Solutions.” We invited leading analysts to address the challenges for researchers, journals, and research institutions. In this blog symposium, plenary speakers from the conference examine three foundational elements of credible research:

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Navigating the Research-Clinical Interface in Genomic Medicine: Challenging the Traditional Dichotomy Between Research & Clinical Care

By Susan M. Wolf & Wylie Burke

Translational genomics challenges the traditional view that research and clinical care are distinct activities that should be governed by separate norms, rules, and law. Beginning with the Belmont Report and emergence of regulations governing the conduct of research with human participants, the conventional view has been that there are fundamental differences between research and clinical care, necessitating distinctive ethical frameworks, regulatory oversight, and legal analyses.

However, a new paper published in Genetics in Medicine reports the first empirical test of this conventional dichotomy in the context of genomics. The paper analyzes empirical data collected by surveying investigators conducting major NIH-funded genomics research projects in the NHGRI/NCI-supported Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research (CSER) Consortium. Those investigators report their actual practices, experiences, and attitudes in navigating the research-clinical interface. These results reveal how the research-clinical boundary operates in practice and cast serious doubts on the adequacy of the conventional dichotomy. Read More

Bill of Health Blog Symposium: How Patients Are Creating the Future of Medicine

We are pleased to host this symposium featuring commentary from participants in the University of Minnesota’s Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences event, “How Patients Are Creating Medicine’s Future: From Citizen Science to Precision Medicine.”  Below, Susan M. Wolf tees up the issues.  All posts in the series will be available here.

How Patients Are Creating the Future of Medicine: Roundtable at the University of Minnesota

By Susan M. Wolf, JD (Chair, Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences; McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine & Public Policy; Faegre Baker Daniels Professor of Law; Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota)

Citizen science, the use of mobile phones and other wearables in research, patient-created medical inventions, and the major role of participant-patients in the “All of Us” Precision Medicine Initiative are just a few of the indicators that a major shift in biomedical research and innovation is under way. Increasingly, patients, families, and the public are in the driver’s seat, setting research priorities and the terms on which their data and biospecimens can be used. Pioneers such as Sharon Terry at Genetic Alliance and Matthew Might at NGLY1.org have been forging a pathway to genuine partnership linking patients and researchers. But the legal and ethical questions remain daunting. How should this research be overseen? Should the same rules apply as in more conventional, academically driven research? What limits should apply to parental use of unvalidated treatments on children affected by severe, rare disease? And should online patient communities be able to set their own rules for research?

In December 2016, the University of Minnesota’s Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences convened four thinkers with diverse academic and professional backgrounds to analyze these trends. This event, “How Patients Are Creating Medicine’s Future: From Citizen Science to Precision Medicine” was part of the Consortium’s Deinard Memorial Lecture Series on Law & Medicine, co-sponsored by the University’s Center for Bioethics and Joint Degree Program in Law, Science & Technology, with support from the Deinard family and law firm of Stinson Leonard Street. To see a video of the event, visit https://z.umn.edu/patientledvideo.

The four speakers offered diverse and provocative perspectives, each of which is highlighted in this series.

Dying: Closing the Gap between What We Know & What We Do

By Susan M. Wolf, JD (University of Minnesota), Nancy Berlinger, PhD (The Hastings Center), and Bruce Jennings, MA (Center for Humans and Nature)

Time is running out on fixing the way we die. As readers of this blog know, the courts first declared a right to refuse unwanted life-sustaining treatment in the 1976 Quinlan case. Nearly 4 decades later, too many people are still burdened with treatments they don’t want, can’t get support for care at home, and are dying without good relief of pain and suffering. So it was no surprise that the highest court in Canada finally threw in the towel. In its Feb. 6 opinion in Carter v. Canada, the court found people still “suffering intolerably as a result of a grievous and irremediable medical condition.” The court thus recognized a right to physician aid in dying. Canada now has a year to set up a system that will permit the practice while protecting the vulnerable from abuse.

Regardless of your views on physician aid in dying, too large a gap remains between what we know is high-quality care at the end of life and what we actually do to care for dying people. The Feb. 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine included four articles on the problem, including our analysis of “Forty Years of Work on End-of-Life Care: From Patients’ Rights to Systemic Reform.”  Read More