Firstly, this summary post will highlight the ethical, legal, social, and professional impacts on the choice of Abi, a statistical programmer and researcher who received a project from the manufacturer of a new cereal, Whizzz.

Milnaric (2017) states that research with positive results is circulated more than research with negative findings, which results in the creation of publication bias. Consequently, undisclosed negative results present a bias in Abi’s statistical research findings which misleads the executives of Whizzz cereal (Milnaric, 2017).

The absence of negative results which confirm the harmful effects of Whizzz cereal deters the manufacturers of the cereal to implement additional statistical research to mitigate the dangerous effects of the cereal. Consequently, ethical concerns must be contemplated by Abi prior to the publication of the research results to the manufacturers of Whizzz cereal.

Resnik & Shamoo (2017) denote that reproducibility is the capacity of researchers and statistical programmers such as Abi attain similar findings when replicating a project. Thus, reproducibility provides researchers with evidence that the research findings are objective, trustworthy, and are not formulated with bias. Furthermore, the irreproducibility of Abi’s research project may signify adverse professional and ethical impacts on his integrity as a researcher.

As a result, Resnik & Shamoo (2017) maintain that the irreproducibility in scientific research is attributed to data misrepresentation and falsehood, which is an ethical problem. Nonetheless, the irreproducibility of Abi’s project findings can yield dire health consequences for the consumers of Whizzz cereal, thereby negatively affecting public welfare (Horton 2015).

In conclusion, the UK research integrity office (2021) states that organizations such as the institute which employs Abi must supervise and inspect research projects to guarantee that they are formulated in agreement with moral practices, in conjunction with legal and ethical obligations.

REFERENCES

Mlinarić, A., Horvat, M. and Šupak Smolčić, V., (2017) Dealing with the positive publication bias: Why you should really publish your negative results. Biochemia medica, 27(3), pp.447-452.

Resnik, D.B. and Shamoo, A.E. (2017) Reproducibility and research integrity. Accountability in research, 24(2), pp.116-123.

Gelman, A., (2015) Statistics and research integrity. European Science Editing, 41(1), pp.13-14.

Horton, R., (2015) Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma. Lancet, 385(9976), p.1380.

UK Research Integrity Office (2021) Code of Practice For Research Promoting good practice and preventing misconduct. Available at: https://ukrio.org/wp-content/uploads/UKRIO-Code-of-Practice-for-Research.pdf (Accessed: February 17, 2023).