THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH

RESEARCH POLICIES COMMITTEE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2003

4006 Fleming Building

10:00 - 12:00 noon

Members:  Katarina Borer, Kitty Bridges, Thomas Brock, Lee Harle, Judy Nowack, Jane Ritter (staff), J. Hunter Waite, Victor Wong, Fawwaz Ulaby and David Wu.

The minutes of January 10, 2003 were reviewed and approved.

Update from Chair regarding the reception of the Recommendations for the change in titles of the primary research scientists (PRS) track II:  Recommendations met with some commotion in SACUA and Senate Assembly (SA).  Prior to the SA meeting, several PRS in AOSS and School of Nursing contacted K. Borer and offered support in the form of attendance and willingness to speak at the SA meeting.  K. Borer asked SACUA about the accessibility of the PRS at SA meeting on Monday, 2/17/03. The meeting was open to the public, but the opportunity to speak was limited to the times scheduled for the RPC chair and Mr. Ulaby. There was a concern that a large presence of PRS may cause alarm among the SA faculty and backfire. In addition at least two PRS advised against PRSs speaking on their behalf lest this be construed as a conflict of interest. Instead a new strategy was adopted of recruiting either unit heads or SA representatives as spokespersons for the PRSs. J. Hunter Waite will ask Len Fisk (chair of AOSS) to speak in favor of the Recommendations. The best thing RPC could do would be to get one of the SACUA members who voted against the Recommendations to change their minds.    Katarina will talk to School of Nursing PRSs to try and get their Dean or SA representative to attend and speak in support of Recommendations.

A short discussion about the cause of anticipated opposition to the Recommendations ensued.  K. Borer was not contacted by SACUA members after the meeting but Jane Leu and SACUA meeting minutes Indicated faculty concern about   Recommendations (1) being viewed as an attempt to undermine tenure, (2) allowing research professors to drop the “research” qualifier and misrepresent themselves as a teaching faculty member as apparently may be happening with the clinical titles in the Medical School T. Brock who served on Medical School Task Force Brought forth the information that the Clinical Task Force: suggested dropping  of the “clinical” title name because it is viewed as demeaning, giving less than full acknowledgement of services rendered, and suggestive .  of “second class citizenship”.  Instructional track faculty do not want this, and this is producing resistance to acceptance of the Recommendations.  And (3) grandfathering of all of the present Senior Research Scientists to the Research Professor title even if some of them may not currently meet the criteria. Grandfathering is an issue of raised sensitivity that should be downplayed at the SA meeting.  This issue may be presented as an issue of what action does least harm.  Of about 60 people, maybe 10% may not be qualified but would end up with the title.  This would only affect the process at this stage of transition.  VP Ulaby’s preference is to promote or change titles on all, as it would cause least damage.  In the future, the revised criteria will be applied. 

Mr. Ulaby made clear that the qualifiers to the professorial titles need to be retained, as there are many different jobs within a university with different responsibilities and titles designate what the job is.  Clinical track is different from instructional track.  The same is true with changed research scientist titles.  Research professor as a title does not imply identical role as a Professor. And the “Research” qualifier should not be dropped.  The authority to approve promotions to PRSs rests with the OVPR and this should remain so.

A clarification between SACUA and SA was given. SACUA is the 9 -faculty member executive arm of the Senate Assembly.  Senate Assembly consists of representatives from schools and colleges at large (usually two per academic unit). 

The plan is for Katarina Borer will present RPC Recommendations to the Senate Assembly and present the resolutions on the title changes and to encourage other RPC members to participate.

Fawwaz presented RPC recommendations to Deans.  A subset of Deans is meeting to discuss the issue and will come back with their recommendations and viewpoints.  This will then be presented to the Executive Officers to try and come up with a consensus.  SACUA’s response and reaction was mixed but narrowly said no.  If Senate Assembly says no, this still does not kill the recommendation.  They are advisory bodies only but the preference is to have their backing.  The meeting is a chance to explain that this is not a tenure issue and that it doesn’t follow that removing parts of the title would happen down the road (removing “research” from title.)

ISSUES ABOUT RESTRICTION ON RESEARCH were next discussed using

K. Borer’s document, distributed during January 10, 2003 meeting.

Vice President Ulaby introduced the discussion by outlining three issues that need university discussion and resolution. They are:  What to do about:

1.      restrictions on research beyond what we currently accept

2.      restriction on foreign national participation

3.      requirements on facilities that perform research

Regarding the Issue 1, it was the subject of meeting of the National Academy of Science in Washington, 2-3 weeks ago. The author of the MIT report shared at the last meeting was there. Views exchanged from key players at the conference included:

1.      desire to maintain open environment

2.      reluctance to accept classified research as there are sensitive issues that create a, slippery slope

3.      opinion that if research with high levels of restrictions needs to be done, it should be done off campus.

Mr. Atlas, -president of American Association of Microbiology talked about constraints and issues, but concluded that in the end we don’t know what to do.  Nothing to offer in straightforward approach.

Mr. Albright from the -Office of Science and Technology Policy, represented homeland security. She stated that

a.       we cannot escape new realities – living in environment subject to potential terrorism, etc.

b.      There are two ways to go about developing guidelines

1.      government develops the rule – These are likely to be draconian and untenable

2.      universities develop approaches and, get the government to accept them.  Basically universities-have been told that monkey’s on their back

Among the conference attendees was the Editor of Nature.  He rejected a manuscript because it could be useful to terrorists.  He did not want to take the responsibility of publishing such a paper.

A problem case study also was presented:

An MD working on tissue rejection synthesized a virus and described the method in a paper.  When the paper was published, she was attacked in the media for creating a tool for terrorists.  This creates the problem: science demands reproducibility for which detailed information is needed. Whose responsibility is it to decide what to include in a paper describing a potentially hazardous procedure?  The researcher, the institution, the journal and its review process, or the government?  Do we want to establish boards to review the sensitivity of information before publication?

A discussion among the RPC members ensued. A comment was made that if there are no further terrorist attacks, restrictions will likely fade away.  However, if an attack occurs, they will increase. The crux of the problem is that the essence of academic life is the ability to create work that can be reproduced. 

A question was raised:  What happens to work that is not approved for publication on account of its sensitive content?  Is it suppressed?  Is this right?  How do we determine what publications are useful to terrorists?  Most of the information for terrorism activity is already in the literature.

Are there penalties in place for “violations” and what is a “violation”?  If you define a violation, then there is a penalty.  Penalties would depend on the reason for the restrictions.  Could be civil or legal.  There have been large fines for export of select agents, etc.  If the restrictions are well defined, the institution can educate and support.  This is more difficult when broad or ill-defined restrictions.  We don’t want “blunt instrument” which we would have if government comes up with solutions or policies.

 A working title of our discussion topic was proposed: Research ethics in the light of national security.  .

The consensus of the RPC member discussion can be summarized as the following positions:

·                    The responsibility for imposing limitations on publication of any work that may jeopardize national security or human welfare should be shared by the institution and the individual researcher.

·                    At the institutional level, both the Division of Research Development and Administration (DRDA) and the Office of the Vice President of Research (OVPR) should share this responsibility. The DRDA should monitor adherence to the ethical positions in the grant proposals submitted for approval and processing. The OVPR should play a leading role in assuring that ethical positions are formulated and transmitted to appropriate individuals.

o                               Formulation of ethical positions should be made by a panel consisting of an appropriate representative mix of faculty and administrators using the available information and resources.

o                               Dissemination of this information should utilize Research Associate Deans, educational programs of the kind exemplified by the 2002-2003 Research Responsibility Program, and an electronic educational resource that could be a module within PEERRS.

o                               The Research Associate Deans should have the responsibility of understanding the institutional ethical positions and of transmitting this information to the research faculty and the Deans within their academic units.

o                               The educational program of the kind represented by the 2002-2003 Research Responsibility Program also should be used to disseminate the ethical position stands. Its implementation needs to have features that make attendance by research faculty and scientists obligatory rather than voluntary.

o                               The electronic educational resource should be read (and its comprehension tested) by all investigators submitting research applications to DRDA whether or not these applications have an obvious publication restriction problem. The universal dissemination of ethical positions is necessary as any research may have unanticipated outcomes that merit publication restriction.

·                    Both the individuals and institutional representatives should recruit other institutions as partners in sharing of the ethical values and in the responsibility for their dissemination. These institutional partners could include:

o                               Professional organizations. They can issue position statements about the ethical limits to research and publication consistent with their professional missions. They also can influence adherence to these ethical positions through the professional journals that they sponsor. These in turn can disseminate ethical positions by publishing appropriate editorials;

o                               Professional and scientific journals that are not directly affiliated with a specific professional organization;

o                               Academic institutional consortia such as CIC (Committee on Inter-university Cooperation).

The next meeting will be March 14, 2003.