Addressing the Hidden Curriculum in Scientific Research

Arri Eisen and Roberta M. Berry (2002) call for a new approach to teaching research ethics. They argue that ethics education must be integrated, relevant, and visible to be effective. Across the spectrum of ethics education we are learning that the effect of teaching rudimentary ethics through one-time lectures is minimal. I applaud Eisen and Berry's call for a shift in thinking about how we are approaching the mandatory ethics education, and I propose that educators focus attention on the "hidden curriculum" of scientific research.

The hidden curriculum refers to the teaching that happens outside of the formal curriculum taking place in classrooms and lecture halls. Lessons from the hidden curriculum are taught implicitly, through role models, institutional leadership, peers, or during the course of practice. In one professional training context, medical education, educators have come to recognize the impact of the hidden curriculum on the professional development of medical students and trainees (Hundert, Hafferty, and Christakis 1996). Hundert, Hafferty, and Christakis describe the informal curriculum as the information passed down through interpersonal interactions; it is the residents talking in the locker room after surgery or the students carpooling to campus together. In these interactions trainees discover "how it really works." The hidden curriculum is the broader concept of which the informal curriculum is a part; it describes the structure and cultural climate in which medical education takes place. To locate the hidden curriculum in the medical school environment, one examines "commonly held 'understandings,' customs, rituals, and taken-for-granted aspects of what goes on . . . in medical education" (Hafferty 1998). These might include noticing what does and does not get put on the exam or on what basis a resident (or faculty member) is evaluated. The hidden curriculum includes attending to where ethics appears in the formal training: Is it the afternoon slot on Fridays? Are junior and senior people present? Both the informal and the hidden curricula are identified as "hidden" because there is rarely open discussion about the lessons that are taught there.

Science and scientists also have a hidden curriculum. There are implicit practices and behaviors that have become the norm, as honorary authorship is de rigueur and side investments in companies by investigators are common. Institutions and journals are beginning to address these practices, as Eisen and Berry point out, with rules and guidelines for reporting contributions of authors and any conflicts of interest. However, part of the potency of the hidden curriculum is the fact that it is unwritten and largely undiscussed. Trainees observe behaviors but, without understanding the context or having an opportunity for dialogue, can take away less-desirable lessons. An investigator, for example, might possess a legitimate holding in a company funding the investigator's research, a holding approved by his or her university and appropriately disclosed at conferences or journals where the research is presented. The trainee, however, might not witness the inner negotiations or disclosures that take place and might therefore miss an opportunity to learn about ethical relationships with industry.

Addressing the hidden curriculum is therefore one of the challenges that educators in research ethics must face. One educational strategy involves highlighting further the educational model Eisen and Berry borrow from the Poynter Center and moral psychology. This framework for moral education features four components (Rest and Narvaez 1994). Ethics education should address a learner's ability to:

1. recognize ethical issues when they arise;
2. reason through ethical dilemmas and determine a justified response;
3. have an awareness of professional responsibility to know that one must act; and
4. act in the face of ethical conflict.

Traditional ethics education programs feature reasoning abilities (component 2 above). And yet the other three components represent important skills that can, and should, be taught. It is not always clear without practice that something might be an ethical issue, or how one should behave in a situation, even after an ethical issue and solution have been identified. Given the implicit...