A proposal by the US federal government that all research staff — from managers to research assistants — should be required to take courses in the responsible conduct of research has met with a mixed reaction from organizations representing academic researchers.

Mary J. C. Hendrix, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), says that the proposal for mandatory courses on topics such as biomedical ethics and conflict of interest is “overly broad”. Last year a report commissioned by the NIH noted that the researchers it funded faced too many regulations (see Nature 398, 180; 1999).

But the Association of American Universities supports broad training in research conduct, Mark Brenner, vice chancellor for research and graduate education at Indiana University told an NIH conference on conflict of interest last week (see above).

Koski: wants broader impact. Credit: MGH

The requirements have been proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity, as a revision of Public Health Service (PHS) guidelines for education in the “responsible conduct of research”. FASEB has been pushing to extend the 21 August deadline for responses to the guidelines.

Hendrix agrees that students and trainees should take courses in research conduct, but says requiring everyone operating under a PHS grant to do so would be expensive and time-consuming.

Greg Koski, incoming director of the Office for Human Research Protections, supports broader training in the ethics of research. “The education needs to go well beyond the investigator,” he said during the conference.

http://ori.dhhs.gov/TheRCRPolicy.htm

http://www.faseb.org/opar/ltr/oriltr.html