The research protocol for drug research requires that the drugs be administered to 100 laboratory mice in different doses. A researcher almost completed the experiment, leaving only 25 mice to be tested. He has injected the drug into all 50 mice, but has not yet completed all tests. In a hurry, he decided to extrapolate another 25 results from the 75 completed results. Do you think this is ethical? Comment.
Answers
Answer:
This will require an explanation of how this is ethically incorrect.
Explanation:
The ethical standards for reporting research doesn’t allow any scope for false information either by lying or by the omission of truth, hence it is out of the question to use the information obtained out of 75 subjects and pawn it of, as it is from 100 subjects.
One may use fewer subjects for the experiment and extrapolate from the data only as long as the researcher has been truthful regarding the conduct of the experiment and the changes in the number of data points they ended up with.
Ethically it is wrong to fabricate data, and as soon as the researcher comes across a situation where the number of testing agents has been different than what he planned initially, it is their responsibility to record that development and ensure that the facts come out in the publication.
In addition to the discussion segment of the report could read like, “The initial research plan for the experiment was to conduct it over 100 mice, but due to the time constraints and logistical issues, we went on to conduct the experiment over 75 mice (A number less by 15%, than what we planned to begin with), We then used the findings to extrapolate it over 100 mice. We further look forward to conducting larger research and match our extrapolation findings with the same.”
In case the researcher believes that their finding is insufficient owing to the fact that the number of testing agents has been less than what was initially planned, they may still make a good case, go ahead and apply for publication. As it may serve as a motivation to redo the experiment over a larger population.
Hope this helps!