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Uganda lacks co-ordinated efforts to address the problem of research misconduct both at the national and institutional levels. (Photo by John Odyek)

Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST) acting executive secretary Dr Martin Ongol says experts have recommended that to solve this problem, multiple disciplinary involvements in establishing a Ugandan framework for responsible conduct of research be set up.

The framework is expected to, include research and academic institutions, professional organisations, government departments, funders/sponsors of research activities and research consortia.

Such a framework could then be maintained and implemented by a centralized national body.

The proposal was made during the launch of the Strengthening Ethics and Responsible Conduct of Clinical Trials in East and Sub-Saharan Africa project. The function took place on Tuesday at the Hilton Inn Hotel in Kampala.

Research misconduct and questionable research practices include subtle trespasses such as not submitting valid negative results for publication, not reporting flaws in study design or execution, selective citation to enhance one’s own findings and so forth.

In a speech read on his behalf by Dr Christopher Ddamulira, a senior scientist at UNCST, Ongol said the proposed project seeks to close the gap and strengthen regulatory capacity through the establishment of frameworks on research integrity and open science in addition to establishing an e-learning platform for the Good Research Regulatory Practice Course (GRRP).

The project is expected to build capacity and establish research ethics committees in national regional referral hospitals in Uganda. This comes at a time when the Ministry for Science, Technology and Innovation has emphasized decentralisation of regulation, especially in host institutions.

UNCST is undertaking a three-year project of €599,000 (shillings 2.4 billion) funding from the European Union Commission’s European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).

It is working in collaboration with Maastricht University, Netherlands, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences- Malawi, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, and the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology.

EDCTP targets to strengthen clinical research regulation and ethics in developing countries.

“Project is important given that there is still a challenge in research ethics and open science, specifically, the lack of infrastructure for open data sharing and fair data management, lack of national guidelines and frameworks for scientific integrity,” Ongol said.

He added that reports show that there have been several instances of research misconduct in sub-Saharan Africa. A descriptive study reported over 68% of researchers admitting to having committed at least one form of scientific misconduct, including authorship conflict (36.4%), plagiarism (9.4%) and data falsification (42%), intentional violation of participant recruitment procedures and pressure from sponsors (19.4%).

Unethical authorship was the main misconduct reported in a study investigating research collaboration in universities.

Project co-ordinator Dr Gowri Gopalakrishna of Maastricht University said the project would enhance the quality and confidence of research being conducted in Uganda and participating countries.

Gopalakrishna said she was part of a team that undertook the national survey on research integrity targeting all disciplinary fields and academic ranks in the Netherlands.

It included questions about engagement in fabrication, falsification and 11 questionable research practices over the previous three years, and 12 explanatory factor scales.

A total of 6,813 respondents completed the survey, which showed that the prevalence of fabrication was 4.3%, falsification 4.2%, prevalence of questionable research practices ranged from 0.6% to 17.5% with 51.3% of respondents engaging frequently in at least one questionable research practice.

On making research relevant to Africa, Gopalakrishna said the Cape Town statement on fairness, equity and diversity in research put forward the principle that researchers from the North should undertake research that is relevant to Africa. 

This is because the benefits of scientific collaboration are too often skewed towards wealthier countries. Furthermore, it requires that researchers from the South are not used as data collectors by researchers from the North.

Hellen Opolot, the project scientific lead of the Strengthening Ethics and Responsible Conduct of Clinical Trials in East and Sub-Saharan Africa (SERCEA) Project, said the increased number of clinical trials and complexity of clinical trial designs taking place in Africa requires countries to have a well- established regulatory system.

Opolot noted that with the onset of COVID-19, the number of clinical trials in Uganda increased: “There is a lot of research going on in hospitals, but there is no monitoring, with research ethics and integrity this can be solved.”

She added that many institutions, research institutions and universities do not have research integrity policies. According to her, some researchers have complained of not being included in publications and that if a company comes up with a drug they need consent from participants trying the drugs. 

The participants have to be paid for their time, and their health and safety have to be maintained.

“We need regulations that can back up the guidelines on research that we have for researchers that do not follow them,” Opolot said.

The basis of sound public policy relies on trustworthy and high-quality research. Continued efforts to promote responsible research practices which include open science practices like open data sharing, pre-registration of study protocols, and open access publication over questionable research practices are, therefore, needed.