Luxembourg’s approach to research integrity during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace of research from its routine marathon to a sprint, and this can increase the risk of both human error (mistakes) as well as research misconduct. In an effort to save time, researchers can be tempted to “cut corners”, discount ethical complexity, or use methods and approaches that fall outside of good research practice. Ethically, it is vital that research outputs during a pandemic be robust because clinical decision-making may reflect on these research results. Luxembourg, while a small European nation, is known for its well-ranked global research and innovation. Accordingly, Luxembourg’s national organization for research integrity has taken several proactive measures to help researchers nationally and globally, foster robust research. This paper reports on these measures and encourages other nations to similarly assist the research community.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• research ethics
• research integrity
• bioethics

Notes

1. Institutions pay a yearly membership fee that provides their students and staff free access to LARI’s services. The current 5 members are: Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), Luxembourg Institute for Socio-Economic Research (LISER), and Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST).

2. LIST has chosen not to participate in the voluntary coach program.

3. Shareable curriculum materials available on request to the author.

4. Voluntary, anonymous feedback collected by LARI after each course using one SurveyMonkey questionnaire which pools data across all course sections. Data and questionnaire available on request to the author.

5. Personal communication received from the University of Southern Denmark.