News archive

New world congress on research integrity

2010-02-03
In July, the first world congress, in Lissabon 2007, is followed by a second conference, this time in Singapore, where policy makers from all over the world will gather to discuss better standars for science. Read more »

Are perfectly good articles blocked?

2010-02-03
According to the BBC News, stem cell experts claim a small group of scientists is effectively vetoing high quality science from publication in journals. Read more »

Are citations & impact good meausures?

2010-02-03
That is questioned in a recent BBC News column, and a warning of corrupt science is given. Read more »

Common with disregard for author rules

2010-01-27
Almost one in two of new doctorates in medicine claim that their articles include scholars as authors that according to the Vancouver rules should not be listed, Läkartidningen writes. Read more »

Fraud big problem in China

2010-01-25
After the reporting of many Chinese cases of fraud in research, calls for greater efforts to stop such behaviour is heard, writes Asia Times Online. Read more »

No more affirmative action at universities

2010-01-20
Now the Government stops the possibility of using affirmative action at Swedish universities, as it has proved to be unfair, argues Tobias Krantz. Read more »

A step closer to new animal testing directive

2009-12-09
New legislation regarding the use of animals for scientific experiments is nearer after Parliament and Council representatives reached an agreement of principle on the main issues., eGov Monitor reports. Read more »

Researcher quits because of interference

2009-12-09
Nature News announces that an Australian researcher quits after a funding body tried to make major changes to a controversial research paper. Read more »

Study halted because of fear of reprisals

2009-12-09
A study on baboons has been cancelled by the Oklahoma State University, because of worries that animal rights activists might respond with violent acts, reports Nature News. Read more »

EU-patent is closer

2009-12-07
The EU Competitiveness Council has agreed on a general approach to the draft Regulation on the EU patent. Read more »

Too many promises?

2009-12-01
ABC News reports that some stem cell scientists are worried they might not be able to live up to some of the promises that have been made about their work. Read more »

Trials shall be disclosed

2009-11-19
All clinical trials in patients shall now be disclosed in registers and databases, the international federation of pharmaceutical manufacturers has decided. Read more »

Senator investigates ghostwriting practices

2009-11-19
U.S. Senator Grassley has written to 10 top medical schools asking what they are doing about professors who put their names on ghostwritten articles in medical journals — and why that practice is any different from plagiarism by students, New York Times reports. Read more »

11 years to debar misconducting doctors

2009-11-12
In some instances, it has taken The US Food and Drug Administration up to 11 years to debar doctors who has been fund out engaging in misconduct or even crimes when doing research, a report from the US Government Accountability Office shows.
Read more »

Dishonest statement leads to accusations

2009-11-12
A UK researcher didn't get access to all data in a study funded by Procter & Gamble, but the published article stated that "all authors had full access to the data and analyses", BMJ informs.
Read more »

IBC will meet in Mexico

2009-11-10
At its 16th meeting, the International Bioethics Committee will discuss cloning and human vunerability. Working documents (reports) are to be found under IBC in the section 'rules and guidelines'. Read more »

Whistleblower got fired

2009-10-27
When dr Stratton had enough and blowed the whistle on dangerous cancer research she got fired, according to IRB Forum. Now many ask how common these ills are in the USA. Read more »

Hwang got a suspended sentence

2009-10-27
After a three-year trial, Hwang Woo-Suk, the South Korean stem cell researcher accused of criminal fraud and embezzlement was convicted of embezzling 830 million won ($705,000) in research funds and of illegally buying human eggs for his research. He will not, however, serve any time behind bars, writes The Scientist. Read more »

EU assesses the Clinical Trials Directive

2009-10-20
After massive criticism, the EU now has launched a public consultation to assess whether its Clinical Trials Directive can be improved while taking the global dimension of clinical trials into better account. Read more »

New conflict rules

2009-10-15
Editors of some of the world's top medical journals will soon begin to demand more stringent, uniform reporting of conflicts of interest by researchers, says Wall Street Journal. Read more »

ISSCR to regulate stem cell therapeutics

2009-10-15
An international society is now moving towards a regulation of companies offering unproven stem cell therapies to patients, PHG Foundation reports. Read more »

Image manipulation on the rise

2009-10-14
Nature News reports that incidents of falsified images have jumped recently, something science journals now takes action against. Read more »

More than meets the RMI

2009-10-13
Philosopher Roger Scruton argues that neuroscience might lead to uninteresting conclusuíons, or even nonsense, in a recent Times Online piece.
Read more »

Commission supports nano-regulation

2009-10-13
The Parlament now gets a positive response to the call for a clear regulatory and policy framework on nanomaterials, EurActiv writes. Read more »

Public Access to Genome-Wide Data

2009-10-13
Can individuals be identified through GWD? Should the publication of such data therefore be shut down? Since NIH and the Wellcome Trust recently draw those conclusions, the debate has raged on, here in an article from PLoS Genetics. Read more »

Retracts article by Iran's science minister

2009-09-30
Iranian researchers say to Nature, they are dismayed and angered that a 2009 paper coauthored by Kamran Daneshjou, Iran's science minister, appears to have plagiarized a 2002 paper published by South Korean researchers. Read more »

Did HIV-vaccine dump risk on to Thailand?

2009-09-25
In an article in The Guardian, the ethics of outsourcing trials to the developing world is questioned. Read more »

Ethics scrutiny for China-Europe research

2009-09-08
That biomedical research collaborations between Europe and China need greater ethical oversight to combat unregulated stem-cell therapies and prevent the exploitation of clinical-trial participants, is the message of a news piece in Nature News.
Read more »

Cysts halt Geron stem cell trial

2009-09-08
After recent tests that revealed the formation of cysts in some animal trail subjects, FDA has freeezed a trial, BioNews reports. Read more »

Disclosure not sufficient

2009-08-31
Disclosure of financial conflicts of interests to potential participants in research is important, but may have a limited role in managing these conflicts, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins, Duke and Wake Forest. Read more »

Greater animal use after REACH?

2009-08-26
Implementation of REACH legislation may require 54 million research animals and €9.5 billion over the next 10 years, which represents 20 times the number of animals and six times the cost anticipated in previous estimates, writes EurekAlert. Read more »

EU law 'putting brakes on science'

2009-08-25
EurActiv.com reports that, according to a leading academic, european rules on medical research have decimated academic studies due to spiralling insurance costs and bureaucracy.
Read more »

Should child donors have their say?

2009-08-24
Bioethicists argue for stricter rules at genetic repositories. A contested issue in Nature News with comments by Mats G. Hansson, Karen Maschke and others. Read more »

REACH misses nano!

2009-08-18
The EU's chemical regulagtion is not adepted to address nano materials, three researchers write in the paper Miljöforskning. Read more »

Ghostwriters pushed therapy

2009-08-06
Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company, paid a medical communications firm to draft scientific papers, apparantley to promote the sales of its hormone drugs, writes The New York Times. Read more

New GCP inspections initiative

2009-08-04
The European Medicines Agency and the US Food and Drug Administration have agreed to launch a joint initiative to collaborate on international Good Clinical Practice (GCP) inspection activities. Read more »

Journal retracts artificial sperm paper

2009-08-03
The journal which published a startling paper claiming to have derived sperm cells from human embryonic stem cells has taken the radical step of retracting it because of plagiarism, BioEdge reports. Read more »

NIH human stem cell research guidelines

2009-07-07
National Institutes of Health finally issues research guidelines, taking President Obama's executive order into account.
Read more »

EU legislation increases workloads

2009-06-25
A review of the effects of the legislation governing clinical trials in the European Union has backed up some researchers' complaints about the regulations, writes Nature News. Read more »

The Past, Present, and Future of Bioethics

2009-06-24
In this commentary, Susan Gilbert relates the 40-year history of the Hastings Center and asks what the future might bring.
Read more »

Hoax paper challenges Open Access

2009-06-17
Bentham published a nonsensical article in an OA journal - now the editor quits in protest, says Nature News. Read more »

Women underrepresented in cancer research

2009-06-10
According to a new review, women continue to be under-enrolled in most cancer clinical trials, reports EurekAlert! Read more »

'Outsourcing' clinical trials devastating?

2009-06-04
Canadian researchers studying the effects of a heart drug tried to expedite the experiment by farming out much of their clinical-trial work to developing countries, but the study results there turned out to be largely fraudulent, writes National Post. Read more »

How Many Fabricate and Falsify Research?

2009-06-01
In PLoS, Daniele Fanelli reports the first meta-analysis of surveys about misbehaviour. The results suggest that making up data is more frequent than previously thought. Read more »

Fight over biobank material continues

2009-05-28
When material is to be moved at the Umeå biobank, questions about confidentiality and rights return. Read more (in Swedish) »

Lawsuit challenges patenting of human genes

2009-05-28
Patents have been awarded on human genes for decades, but until last week, no one had directly challenged the underlying idea that genes can be owned in a U.S. court. Now, a challenge has begun, Science tells us. Read more »

Article retracted after 8 years

2009-05-28
In 2000 researchers published a diabetes studie showing great results for gene therapy. Now the journal retracts the article, reports Dagens Medicin. Read more (in Swedish) »

New research ethics library

2009-05-26
A new webpage on research ethics, Forskningsetisk bibliotek (FBIB), has over 60 newly written articles and case studies and movies too. FBIB is created by Norways Forskningsetiske komiteer. Read more »

OECD on research misconduct

2009-05-26
In a new report, OECD has included a guide for how to investigate allegations of research misconduct. Read more »

Should we conduct research on torture?

2009-05-18
Joshua Tucker, in his blog The Monkey Cage, asks himself that, and finds it a hard one to answer. Read more »

New law on secrecy and public documents

2009-05-13
The new law will be in force from June 30 2009. It is a rewrite of the Secrecy Act with the purpose of making the regulation easier to understand and use in practice. Read more »

Serious attack on scientific freedom

2009-05-12
The Company Nemesysco has threatened with court action to prevent the publication of a scientific article in International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, which critized their products, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademin reports. Read more »

One's ethics varies with time

2009-05-11
When a moral judgment concerns something near in time, the ethics suffers, according to a Psychology dissertation by Jens Agerström, Lund University. Read more »

Researchers should share failed experiments

2009-05-11
In a commentary in the Economist on the proposed European rules governing animal experiments, the commission’s proposal that scientists who use animals should share data (subject to confidentiality) from failed experiments is lauded. Read more »

Public inquiry on clinical research completed

2009-05-11
The final report was presented recently. Read more »

Anger after EU vote

2009-05-06
After the vote on new EU animal research legislation, both those in favor and those against get angry, says Nature. Read more »

See further: Link to the text adopted by the Parliament

Merck behind phony journal

2009-05-04
Merck has made up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them. Read more »

Stem cell research returns to South Korea

2009-04-30
South Korea has conditionally lifted a ban on stem cell research using human eggs, three years after outlawing the practice because a scientist was found to have faked his work, Google/AFP reports. Read more »

VR writes EU concerning animal directive

2009-04-29
The Swedish Research Council has, together with a number of other Swedish authorities and organisations, sent a letter to the 19 Swedish parlamentarians, concerning the new EU laboratory animal directive (that has been reported on in earlier news). Read more »

The Wild West of Nanotechnology

2009-04-29
In a field growing exponentially with minimal regulation, significant venture capital and government funding, and even more opportunity for professional advancement and financial gain, there is also opportunity for ethical missteps, cutting corners, cheating, and outright criminal activity to take place, writes Summer Johnson in her blog on bioethics.net. Read more »

Research misconduct: Science retracts article

2009-04-24
Science is retracting an 2005 article on the MAGIC method without the agreement of all authors. Read more ».

Doctor has cloned human embryos?

2009-04-24
An american fertility expert claimes to have cloned 14 human embryos and to have implanted 11 in humans wishing to become mothers, Dagens Medicin reports. Read more »

'Phase 0' Trials to Speed Drug Development

2009-04-20
Through a new model of early drug testing, drugs may reach patients a lot faster, reports Yahoo news. Read more »

Studio ett on whistleblowing

2009-04-16
In today's studio ett (P1) the focus was on the phenomenon of whistleblowing.
Listen to web radio (in Swedish) »

The EU seeks a global regulation of science

2009-04-07
In a new report to the Commission, it is urged, among other things, that scientists publish in open access journals and that the Commission works towards a global regulation of science. Read more »

Nigeria and Pfizer to settle

2009-04-06
Nigeria's Kano state and drugmaker Pfizer Inc have agreed the broad terms of an out-of-court settlement in a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit over a 1996 drug trial, reports Reuters. Read more »

Joy and anger over animal-research vote

2009-04-03
Researchers welcome the alteration of controversial parts of a draft European legislation on animal experimentation, writes Nature News. Read more »

Links: Webpage of the European Parliament and the proposed amendments

Law on medical devices amended

2009-04-03
Through a decision in the Swedish Riksdag the law has been amended to incorporate an EC directive among other things. Read more »

Open access stirs US debate

2009-04-01
When both NIH and MIT adopt open access policies, debate results, phg foundation reports. Read more »

The story of Dr. Leo and the journal

2009-03-24
A conflict between a "whistleblower" and the journal JAMA - told in Bioethics Discussion Blog - leads to question about academic freedom and the right way to handle accusations of ethical misconduct. Read more »

European clinical trial rules under fire

2009-03-18
European medical research strangled by red tape, scientists warn in a Nature news story. Read more »

Related » UK bioscience sector: Declaration of concern on the revision of EU Directive 86/609 on animal experimentation

Millions wasted by duplicating research

2009-03-16
The European Union is wasting billions by investing in new research projects which have already been done by other European scientists, Roland Strauss of Knowledge4Innovation told EurActiv in an interview. Improved communication between research institutes and better use of existing patents could lead to sizeable savings, he said. Read more »

New thesis on ambivalence in academia

2009-03-12
Anders Jörnesten, Uppsala University, Department of Sociology: Forskningens nytta: Om ambivalens i forskningspolitik och vardag. Read more »

Bioethics Briefing Book

2008-12-09
From Birth to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for Journalists, Policymakers, and Campaigns contains 36 overviews of issues in bioethics of high public interest, such as abortion, health care reform, human and sports enhancement, organ transplantation, personalized medicine, medical error, and stem cells. The chapters, written by leading ethicists, are nonpartisan, presenting reasonable considerations from various perspectives that are grounded in good scientific and ethical facts. Read more »

EU says no to stem cell patents

2008-11-28
European patent law prohibits the patenting of human stem cell cultures whose preparation necessarily involves the destruction of human embryos. This is the decision reached by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO).
Read more »

Link: European Patent Office: No European patent for WARF/Thomson stem cell application

Oxford bioethics centre comes under fire

2008-11-26
A UK philosopher has made a stinging attack on Julian Savulescu’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University. In an address to students at Oxford Professor David Oderberg, of the University of Reading, says that it should be radically reformed or closed. Read more »

European animal protection directive updated

EU is currently reworking its animal protection directive, the work can be followed on the EU webpage on laboratory animals. In the Commission proposal, Proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, ethical review of animal research is made obligatory and the use of greater apes in research is prohibited.

Helsinki declaration revised

At the WMA General meeting in Seoul a revised version of the wellknown Helsinki declaration was adopted. It includes several minor changes, as well as a demand that all clinical trials be registred in a public database before inclusion of research subjects.

New journal: Bioethica Forum

Bioethica Forum, the Swiss Journal of Biomedical Ethics, was launched in June 2008. The first issue is freely available online at: http://www.bioethica-forum.ch. Bioethica Forum is a trilingual interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal focussing on issues in biomedical ethics, published by the Swiss Society for Biomedical Ethics.

Globethics - new portal for etics resources

Globethics.net is a global network of persons and institutions interested in different fields of applied ethics. It offers access to resources on ethics, especially through its leading global digital library on ethics. In addition, it facilitates collaborative web-based research, conferences, online publishing and active sharing of information.

Globethics.net aims especially at increasing the visibility of, and access to ethics perspectives from Africa, Latin America and Asia. It strengthens global common values and respect of ethical contextual diversity, including the richness of languages, religions and world views.

The latest news are published on the start page of CODEX!

Last update: 2010-03-09