2016, Vol.17, No.2

Journal of the Korea Bioethics Association 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.55

pISSN : 1598-0324
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kba

As part of social behavioral research(SBR), a qualitative research is to determine qualitative characteristics inherent in human and society. With interest in human and social contexts, the qualitative study aims to provide solutions to problems with those contexts so it may be likely to be affected by personal values that its conductor, or researcher has. The qualitative research may be less likely to be proceeded in accordance with certain objective standards because it tends to put more importance in interactions between the researcher and the subject and contexts of its process. In the qualitative research, therefore, not only the scientific and ethical performance of that research, but also the protection of the subject's safety and rights are greatly dependent on how much the researcher ethically prepare themselves in terms of consciousness and value. And how much the researcher and the subject trust each other is quite important to the better performance of the qualitative research. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of qualitative research as part of SBR, determining limitations that obtaining consent by sufficient explanation may have as a way to protect the safety and rights of the subject. The study also tried to examine the very principle of moral judgement in the researcher-subject relationship, that is, ‘sympathy’ that includes “following the other's feeling” and “sharing a same feeling with the other”, and discussed moral implications that sympathy has in that relationship.

In this paper, it is said that one of the reasons for the proliferation of liberal individualism in the theoretical aspect of bioethics is the influence of the 『Principles of Biomedical Ethics』 co‐authored by Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress in 1979. In the book, Beauchamp and Childress presented the principles of respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice, and these four principles have become important principles of bioethics. However, I consider these four principles to be "principles of liberal individualism" in that both the definitions and the categories of discussion on the main concepts of the four principles are narrowly confined to individuals. And I point out the issues that the main concept definition of and the category of discussion of the four principles of Beauchamp and Childress are narrowly tailored to the individuals, which not only reduce many bioethical problems to the problem of individual choice but also easily overlook the importance of social influence or common good. I should say that the definition of and the category of discussion on the main concepts of four principles of Beauchamp and Childress need to be reinterpreted as a communitarian view that includes society beyond the individual in order for the four principles of Beauchamp and Childress to serve as a practical guideline for the complex bioethical issues raised in concrete and realistic lives

The objectives of this study are, firstly, to detect and analyze cases of misconduct in publication ethics among medical and veterinary science articles published in the Korean Journals, and, secondly, to assess whether iThenticate®, a widely used commercial plagiarism detection software, is an effective tool for detecting the articles that breach publication ethics. In order to conduct similarity check by using iThenticate®, 23,848 articles were extracted from KoreaMed Synapse journals published in 2009 through 2014, and for a practical reason, 30% of the random samples were selected. By utilizing the software options for minor adjustments in several steps, the number of target articles was then nailed down to 142. Finally, a naked-eye comparison of these articles led to the 10 cases of misconduct in publication ethics. A close examination of the cases in line with the Good Publication Practice Guideline tells that (1)there was at least one case of either plagiarism or text-recycling in every study year (2)some articles were published in SCI(E)-indexed journals (3)majority of the corresponding authors were affiliated with surgical divisions. Results of similarity check ranges from 20% to 69%, and the number has no significant correlation with cases that violated publication ethics. This study suggests that there may still have existed unidentified cases of misconduct in publication ethics among medical and veterinary science articles published in the Korean Journals in the study period and years thereafter.