News

New guidance brings together all of the  UK General Medical Council’s (GMC) advice to doctors involved in research highlighting the need for  accurate, objective, prompt and clear reporting.

The UK GMC has published two documents ‘Good practice in research’ and ‘Consent to research’ setting out the good practice principles that doctors are expected to understand and follow if they are involved in research.

‘Good practice in research’ sets good practice principles around the following issues:

• Law and governance
• Good research design and practice
• Protecting participants from harm
• Honesty and integrity
• Avoiding conflicts of interest
• Consent to research
• Respecting confidentiality

The section on honesty and integrity states:

"You must report research results accurately, objectively, promptly and in a way that can be clearly understood (16). You must make sure that research reports are properly attributed and do not contain false or misleading data. Whenever possible, you should publish research results, including adverse findings, through peer-reviewed journals."
Ref 16: The EQUATOR Network website provides advice on good practice in reporting health research. See www.equator-network.org

This guidance is a clear demonstration of a regulatory organisation’s support for responsible research conduct and research reporting.  
The EQUATOR team welcomes the transparent requirement for responsible reporting, which very helpfully includes a link to resources that help to achieve good research reports. We hope that other organisations will follow this lead.


Reference:
Good practice in research’ and ‘Consent to research’. UK GMC 2010 (http://www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/news_consultation/6686.asp; accessed 28 June 2010)

Posted by Iveta Simera