Case Study 2

Case Study 2 Dr. Ford is the principal investigator of a large, epidemiological study on the health of 5,000 agricultural workers. He has an impressive dataset that includes information on demographics, environmental exposures, diet, genetics, and various disease outcomes such as cancer and Parkinson's disease (PD), He has just published a paper on the relationship between pesticide exposure and PD in a prestigious journal and also planning to publish many other papers from this dataset. He receives a request from another research team that wants to access complete dataset. They are interested in examining the relationship between pesticide exposures and skin cancer in which Dr. Ford was planning to conduct a study.

Dr. Ford faces a difficult choice. On the one hand, the ethical norm of openness obliges him to share data with the other research team. His funding agency also have rules that obligate him to share data. On the other hand, if he shares data with the other team, they may publish results that he was planning to publish, thus depriving him (and his team) of recognition and priority. It seems that there are good arguments on both sides of this issue and Dr.Ford needs to take some time to think about what he should do.

How can Dr.Ford deal with ethical dilemmas in research?

What is the problem or issue?

What is the relevant information?

What are the different options?

How do ethical codes or policies, as well as legal rules, apply to these different options?

Suggest one possible option to share data

This is a case study and the questions below are based on the case study. They should be answered with respect to the case study.