Researching with Integrity: The Ethics of Academic Enquiry

Researching with Integrity: The Ethics of Academic EnquiryBruce MacFarlane. New York: Routledge, 2008. 208 pp. $150.00, Pb $45.95At a time when research integrity requirements abound, Bruce MacFarlane's Researching with Integrity: The Ethics of Academic Enquiry stands firmly out as a different and welcome voice for academic researchers. While acknowledging the extant frameworks and established norms from which academic integrity derives, MacFarlane presents the concept in an ethics as what is possible versus an ethics as restriction. For researchers across disciplines, this is a welcome stance, because many non- biomedical/medical researchers express frustration at what seems to be the de facto framework for the discourse of research integrity. Framing the issue within an Aristotelian virtue ethics model, research integrity becomes less about what one can or should do and more about the characteristics or values of a given researcher in the totality of the research experience.MacFarlane uses a narrative approach to present cases from the hard and social sciences: "These are examples of ethical concerns or crises that real researchers have experienced in conducting an investigation" (p. 5). This is an effective strategy, allowing different voices and perspectives to be recognized. MacFarlane is careful to present a mix of novice and experienced researchers who enable cross- disciplinary engagement while operating on the premise that research and research ethics/integrity are lived experiences that are not always simple and predictable. Research integrity principles, as the standard models would imply, are easy to predict and to apply. If researchers are informed about confidentiality, for example, they will be able to ensure it. In reality, any researcher knows it is simply not this straightforward. Specifically, MacFarlane acknowledges that many constraints inhibit researchers: institutions, professional societies, regulatory bodies, and funding agencies all expect researchers to act with integrity. Sometimes, these stakeholders' interests are not in complete alignment, and a code of research ethics fails to provide an answer.It is within MacFarlane's sections two and three that researchers are presented with the virtues necessary to conduct ethically sound work. These virtues stand in stark contract to section one, where standard research violations are discussed and high profile cases, such as Nuremberg and Tuskegee are detailed. Those reminders of research atrocities are helpful, because they encourage researchers to see where we have been and where we are today. They remind us how we came to the default position in research integrity models and why it was necessary to embrace them. But, as we see in "Living the Virtues" and "Integrating Integrity," the research process is more than a reaction. Research integrity through the virtue ethics framework is proactive; it is the researcher who practices and culls the virtues. The virtues are not simply lists of what is permissible, but are deep, personal commitments to a safe, secure, sound, and productive research endeavor. …