Speech focuses on research ethics

Confidentiality issues face changing laws, moral expectations

Balancing moral and legal obligations can be a delicate issue in today's research environment.

Many researchers want to maintain scientific integrity, but laws can often require subject confidentiality to be breached.

The concerns and issues surrounding confidentiality in survey research was the focus of one of the first Research Responsibility Programs yesterday in the Towsley Center at University Hospitals. Yesterday's discussion was sponsored by the Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Edward Goldman, Medical School attorney and School of Public Health lecturer, spoke to researchers, students and faculty about the conflicts of confidentiality in research.

"I think that scientific integrity is very important," Goldman said. "I think confidentiality is important because the only way you can have a meaningful relationship with subjects is by saying that I will keep and respect the privacy of subjects."

Goldman discussed the conflict of morality that a researcher feels versus the obligation to disclose certain information in instances when the law requires them to do so.

"The fact that you say 'anything you say to me will be confidential' is not so," Goldman said. State law says that when a counselor has reason to believe that a patient is imposing a

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