The Faculty Assembly passed a policy and procedure concerning research misconduct during its Nov. 5 meeting in Posvar Hall.<\/p>\n
Kristin Kanthak, the Senate president, updated the rest of the assembly on the recent work of Senate committees<\/a>. Budget Policies<\/a> received a comprehensive report on Pitt admissions and enrollment, with plans to continue looking into the effects of high enrollment throughout the year. Educational Policies<\/a> and other committees will be considering how to roll out the new Anthropic and Amazon Web Services AI model<\/a> and integrate it into Pitt learning platforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n The assembly then moved to the main objective of the meeting \u2014 discussing the RI 07 Research Misconduct Policy and Procedure<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The policy and procedure outline the steps that need to be taken when an allegation of misconduct in Pitt research occurs. Research misconduct<\/a> includes a broad range of offenses, from falsifying data to plagiarism. The current policy needs to be updated by Jan. 1 in order to be compliant with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services<\/a>\u2019 and National Institutes of Health<\/a>\u2019s policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many of the needed policy changes<\/a> have to do with technological updates, such as allowing data to be saved to electronic records and the use of AI in research, according to Katherine Wood, co-chair of the Senate Research Committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wood said about 90% of alleged research misconduct is on projects that have federal funding, so being in line with federal policies regarding misconduct is important.<\/p>\n \u201cThe federal regulations have changed, so we have been updating our policy to conform to changes in the federal regulations. That is the bulk of what we\u2019ve done,\u201d Wood said. \u201cBut \u2014\u00a0 given that we\u2019re doing these modifications \u2014 we might as well make a few changes that we considered necessary to help our processing procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n In the proposed policy, for every misconduct case, an investigative panel of five people is assembled. The panel must include at least two tenured faculty and at least one peer of the respondent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Non-tenured faculty were not included on the list of people that could be chosen as a peer to a respondent in the original proposal. Julia Meade, the Senate vice president, said a non-tenure track researcher might feel that they are not being fairly evaluated during their panels.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is just a big difference, especially in the School of Medicine, between tenure-track-faculty and non-tenure-track faculty,\u201d Meade said. \u201cWould I feel like I am being fairly evaluated as a non-tenure-track researcher by people who often do something that is very different from what I do?\u201d<\/p>\n After that discussion, the assembly voted on an amendment to the policy that would add non-tenure-track faculty to the list of potential peers that could be on an investigative panel.\u00a0<\/p>\n