About RCR
Definitions: RCR and Misconduct
RCR stands for "Responsible Conduct of Research." At Duke, RCR training embodies the full range of ethical responsibilities of those engaged in research and teaching. It encompasses not only the obligation to conduct research and teach with integrity, but also to ensure that the rights and interests of original sources, human subjects and/or animal subjects are protected. Good scholarship relies upon the honesty and integrity of individual researchers. Thus, RCR training is foundational to the very nature of conducting good research that gains the public trust and contributes to the betterment of humanity and society.
Moreover, RCR at Duke is framed as a positive obligation rather than as the avoidance of "misconduct." Research misconduct is defined by Duke University policy as "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results." Federal regulations and definitions can be found at:
U. S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (Dec. 6, 2000)
U. S. Dept . of Health and Human Services
Office of Public Health and Science (PHS)
Office of Research Integrity
See 42CFR Parts 50 and 93, Subpart A (1989, 2004)§ 50.102 Definitions.
Misconduct or Misconduct in Science means fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the scientific community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research. It does not include honest error or honest differences in interpretations or judgments of data.
Our goal is to promote responsible research and academic integrity within the Duke community by providing regular training and resources on a wide range of topics. While the ultimate goal of RCR training is to help faculty and students behave in an ethical manner, we recognize that gaining knowledge about various topics, policies, guidelines, and ethical decision-making serves as a necessary condition.
History of RCR at Duke and Beyond
Since the 1980s, ethical issues related to planning, conducting and reporting scholarly research have become more complex. Several legal cases of scientific misconduct in the 1980s and 1990s captured the attention of the United States Congress, federal agencies, university officials, and the national media. While the majority of these cases related to fabrication or falsification of data, they raised our awareness about the wide range of ethical challenges and decisions faced by anyone who engages in research. They also renewed concerns about historic experiments in which the rights of human subjects were ignored or violated in the name of 'research.' One of the most striking examples was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health (1932-72), in which ~400 African-American men with syphilis were left untreated - even after penicillin became widely available. Further, the researchers did not explain to these men that they were participants in a scientific experiment. Not until 1974 did Congress adopt the National Research Act that authorizes federal agencies to develop human research regulations, e.g. 45 CFR 46, 21 CFR 50,54,56.
As a result of several historic and more recent incidents of research misconduct, the federal government increased efforts to define and to mandate educational requirements in research ethics. By the early 1990s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a requirement that all persons (including graduate students) involved with federally funded research must complete a basic amount of training in research ethics. Recently, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (http://ori.dhhs.gov/) has identified nine core areas of RCR instruction in an attempt to support institutions as they train future researchers.
Alongside this growing public awareness of research misconduct, there was a recognition -- both at Duke and nationally -- that formal training in research ethics was a missing element in the traditional education of many graduate students. Moreover, recent advances in scientific research methods, in specialized fields of knowledge, in emerging technologies (ie, Duke's program in Bioinformatics and Genome Technology) and in presentation or reporting techniques (ie, digital image manipulation) have created other unanticipated ethical challenges for researchers.
Thus, while compliance with recent federal regulations certainly is necessary to maintain funding on grants and contracts, it is not an adequate rationale to provide RCR training. Duke University Graduate School views training in research and professional ethics not as a matter of policy compliance, but as part of a comprehensive graduate education to ensure that Duke Ph.D. graduates are fully prepared to meet the complex challenges they will face as future researchers, scholars, and teachers in the 21st century. While we offer training on a variety of topics (including ORI's core nine), the goal is to help students in every discipline develop ethical and critical thinking skills they can use when facing the "gray areas" of research or teaching.
From the Graduate School's and School of Medicine's perspective, RCR training is one of several professional development initiatives designed to ensure that Duke Ph.D. graduates are fully prepared to meet the complex challenges they will face as researchers, scholars, and teachers. From the doctoral student's perspective, the completion of RCR training ensures that they meet federal requirements to receive funding on grants and contracts for research in which they might participate. For some it may provide the ethical training necessary to obtain licensure or membership in various professional organizations. In addition, RCR training will prepare each student for both general and discipline-specific ethical issues that often arise in the course of conducting original research, writing a dissertation and presenting results.
In an effort to take a national leadership role in providing RCR training for our graduate students, the Executive Committee of the Graduate Faculty (ECGF) required in 1994 that all newly matriculating doctoral students in any department or program receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) undergo training in the Responsible Conduct of Research to comply with NIH regulations. Since that time, all incoming students in doctoral programs in the biomedical sciences have attended a pre-orientation weekend retreat on RCR at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in the coastal town of Beaufort, North Carolina (known at Duke as the "Beaufort Retreat").
In the late 1990s, RCR training grew to include incoming Ph.D. students in the following divisions or schools:
- Biological Sciences (All 15 departments and programs)
- Physical Sciences (Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics)
- Social Sciences (Psychology and Sociology)
- Pratt School of Engineering
- Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Non-biological science programs, including engineering, have attended an annual RCR orientation workshop held by the Graduate School on the Durham campus for several years.
Beginning with the entering Ph.D. class of 2003-04, the Duke University Graduate School took the final step envisioned by the ECGF in 1994 by requiring RCR training for ALL doctoral students, including those in the Humanities and Social Science departments and programs. By making RCR training a formal Ph.D. degree requirement, we hope to ensure that each graduate will leave Duke with the knowledge and skills required to conduct research and to teach with integrity. The commitment of Duke faculty and administrators to RCR education has helped to foster an institutional climate in which the ethical dimensions of research are taken seriously.
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