Trial By Error: Bristol’s Complaint to Berkeley [Short Tuller blog 23rd December 2017]

[Warning: Nerdom ahead!]


I have a feeling that Bristol's complaint to Berkeley went something like General Trelane's complaint to Kirk about Spock's actions in "The Squire of Gothos" episode of Star Trek.

TRELANE: You will see to his punishment?

KIRK: On the contrary. I commend his action.

TRELANE: But I don't like him.

KIRK: Get off my ship.
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At the end of the article he refers to a COPE document

https://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/COPE Forum Agenda and materials 13_11_17_FINAL_2.pdf

which I though summarised the issue of having no ethical permission for trialling service innovations in a very poor way that is unlikely to give the committee the necessary information to understand the issue. Instead it seemed to be trying to protect the BMJ from Tuller's criticism.

These are the questions they ask:
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• Should we allow data collected in service evaluations to be published as research
articles? In medical journals, this is often seen as an acceptable exception; however, if
research ethics committees are declaring a study "not research", should journals do
the same?
• Should the journal have posted a correction on the article to provide a more detailed
ethics statement, bearing in mind that anything labelled a "correction" in a
controversial area would be misinterpreted as an error in the research by the critics?
• How should journals respond to blog posts that they feel portray them unfairly and are
damaging to the publisher's reputation?
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It annoys me that they label something as controversial and then seem to suggest that lesser standards should apply because of that. If something is controversial they should be very careful as issues will be picked up.

The question they should be debating is does an assessment of a new service element count as a "service evaluation" or research. How should journals treat it and where are the boundaries.
 
Adrian said:
These are the questions they ask:
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That's pretty annoying.

How are they claiming that research project was a 'service evaluation'? There was no service to evaluate outside of the research project.

"How should journals respond to blog posts that they feel portray them unfairly and are
damaging to the publisher's reputation?"

Engage in debate? Present evidence? Get to the truth? Realise that your feelings don't matter if you can't support your concerns with worthwhile arguments!
 
Interesting. I hadn't seen that COPE before. I was particularly struck by this line:

In addition, the data were collected anonymously, which would further exempt the study from requiring formal ethical approval.

Am I correct that here Crawley is claiming dispensation from gaining further ethical clearance because the data were collected anonymously?
 
JohnTheJack said:
Interesting. I hadn't seen that COPE before. I was particularly struck by this line:

In addition, the data were collected anonymously, which would further exempt the study from requiring formal ethical approval.

Am I correct that here Crawley is claiming dispensation from gaining further ethical clearance because the data were collected anonymously?
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It's hard to say from that, but it looks like it could have implications for your request for anonymised data.

The trouble is, it makes no sense. How can data be collected anonymously when it involved a clinical assessment? Data from this personal assessments can be anonymised, but it clearly was not collected anonymously.
 
Esther12 said:
It's hard to say from that, but it looks like it could have implications for your request for anonymised data.

The trouble is, it makes no sense. How can data be collected anonymously when it involved a clinical assessment? Data from this personal assessments can be anonymised, but it clearly was not collected anonymously.
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Yes, that's what struck me. But it is strangely worded, as so much about this trial is. I think I'll still use it. I presume she is saying that data as collected are anonymous. Or something.
 
JohnTheJack said:
Interesting. I hadn't seen that COPE before. I was particularly struck by this line:

In addition, the data were collected anonymously, which would further exempt the study from requiring formal ethical approval.

Am I correct that here Crawley is claiming dispensation from gaining further ethical clearance because the data were collected anonymously?
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So why does anonymous data collection mean no ethics approval needed? Although the scope of ethics issues to be considered may have reduced, it surely cannot have dropped to zero?! Does ethics approval only consider the issues of protecting participants privacy rights, or does/should it consider the many other ethical issues?
 
Esther12 said:
That's pretty annoying.
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JohnTheJack said:
Yes, that's what struck me. But it is strangely worded, as so much about this trial is. I think I'll still use it. I presume she is saying that data as collected are anonymous. Or something.
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I think their claim would be that the data is collected by the service and then handed over to researchers in an anonymised form. What this fails to mention is that the researchers are testing an extension to an existing service rather than evaluating a current one. They are trying to suggest that the researchers were not involved with the 'service' which is just misleading.
 
Adrian said:
I think their claim would be that the data is collected by the service and then handed over to researchers in an anonymised form. What this fails to mention is that the researchers are testing an extension to an existing service rather than evaluating a current one. They are trying to suggest that the researchers were not involved with the 'service' which is just misleading.
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Tuller reported Crawley having some direct involvement in the assessment of participants anyway:

http://www.virology.ws/2017/08/28/trial-by-error-no-ethical-review-of-crawley-school-absence-study/
 
Adrian said:
Yes from what I remember that is clear in the paper but she would probably be claiming that that was in her role running the service rather than her roll as a researcher. It all gets very tenuous of course.
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LOL - that would be super tenuous! Hopefully we'll get more from them on the record. I expect that they'll just try to be utterly evasive in the expectation that no-one with power will care, and those who do pay attention couldn't think less of them anyway.
 
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