T01 Overview of Academic Integrity & Ethics

• Integrity = honesty + strong moral principles you refuse to change
• Ethics = system of accepted beliefs controlling behavior

Three ethical theories

Four principles of bioethics (Beauchamp & Childress)

• Respect for autonomy 自主 — respect self-rule / decisions
• Beneficence 行善 — do good
• Nonmaleficence 不傷害 — first, do no harm
• Justice 正義 — fair distribution of benefits/risks

Biotech ethics cases

• Trolley problem — utilitarianism (save 5) vs deontology (don't kill 1)
• CRISPR/gene editing — edit embryos? designer babies? somatic vs germline
• End-of-life — DNAR, withholding treatment, euthanasia (active vs passive), double effect
• COVID — ICU triage, compulsory quarantine, vaccine equity

What is "Academic Integrity and Ethics"?

Per the lecture's GPT-4o definition, academic integrity and ethics is the moral code and ethical policy of academia, built on the values honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility in scholarly work. Maintaining it is crucial for the credibility and reliability of scholarly work and fosters a culture of trust and respect.

Case studies on moral values

Trolley Problem (I): a trolley will kill five tied to a track; you can pull a lever to redirect it onto one person. Do nothing (5 die) or pull (1 dies, 5 live)?

Trolley Problem (II): same five, but you stand on a bridge; you can push a large man down to stop the trolley (he dies, 5 live). Tests the same utilitarian math against a direct personal act — deontology resists killing the one directly.

Clinical scenario (Mrs. X): a burn patient in A&E, two children dead, one of unknown status, herself critical. If she asks how her children are, do you tell the truth or withhold? This is the truth-telling dilemma — "don't tell her."

A brief history of ethical philosophy

• Socrates (469–399 BC): virtue is knowledge; virtue is both necessary and sufficient for happiness (eudaimonia).
• Plato (427–347 BC): four primary virtues — wisdom, courage, justice, moderation — for a truly happy life.
• Aristotle (384–322 BC): happiness achieved when a person is morally virtuous, acting on reason and truth.

The four principles — detail

• Respect for autonomy (自主原則): Latin "self-rule"; obligation to respect others' decisions about their own lives. Also called the principle of human dignity.
• Beneficence (行善原則): the principle of "doing good"; obligation to bring about good in all actions.
• Nonmaleficence (不傷害原則): obligation not to harm — "first, do no harm"; don't increase risk; where harm can't be avoided, minimize it. Combined with beneficence: each action must produce more good than harm.
• Justice (正義原則): respect for human rights and social justice; fair distribution of benefits and risk; in public life, treat all equally, fairly, impartially.

CRISPR / gene editing — the specific questions

CRISPR = Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. The lecture poses the live questions:

• Edit human genomes to eliminate genetic diseases via CRISPR / Cas9?
• Edit human embryos? Prevent severe disease (e.g. AIDS induced by HIV)?
• Edit our children's genomes? Design the baby before birth?
• Legalize gene therapy for inherited diseases among embryos in HK?

End-of-life care — the full checklist

• Withholding / withdrawing of medical interventions
• Breaking bad news / truth-telling
• DNAR (do not attempt resuscitation)
• MOLST (medical order for life-sustaining treatment)
• Symptomatic treatment that may shorten life
• Hastening death — principle of double effect
• Terminal / palliative sedation
• Physician-assisted dying?

Euthanasia = intentionally ending a life to relieve pain and suffering. Active = lethal intervention; "passive" = withdrawal of care (e.g. artificial nutrition and hydration).

COVID-19 & academic ethical issues

COVID-19 ethics: prioritize some patients for ventilation / ICU beds? compulsory quarantine? prevent discrimination against specific groups? decisions on vaccination?

Academic-specific issues the lecture flags:

• Use of clinical samples, animals or humans for experiments
• Use of AI (e.g. generative AI)
• Plagiarism, citation and copyright — including the HKU case: AI-generated non-existent references

Week 3 · Moral and Ethical Issues in Science and Technology (Prof. Xunjin Zhu)

Delivered 14/9/2026. This session moves from abstract ethical theory to documented misconduct cases — the material most likely to appear in the video-presentation assessment.

Why "ownership & inventorship" matters to you

The lecture frames this session as "the rules of the game": knowing them protects you, ensures you get credit, and keeps you out of serious trouble. Two learning goals sit at the centre — distinguishing inventorship from ownership, and identifying the ethical responsibilities of researchers, supervisors, and institutions.

Intellectual Property (IP) splits into two asset classes:

• Physical assets — a physical object (land, car) with limited availability (only a limited number of people can use it at a time).
• Intangible assets (IP) — monetary value but no physical substance (software, brand recognition / goodwill); intellectual assets are creations of the mind (idea, song, writing). They have unlimited availability — one person can use them without preventing others from using them.

IP rights in Hong Kong: types & ordinances

Hong Kong offers several types of IP protection, each tailored to a different asset:

Hong Kong's IP laws are governed by key ordinances: the Patents Ordinance, the Copyright Ordinance, and the Trade Marks Ordinance. These define what can be protected, the length of protection, enforcement mechanisms, penalties for infringement, and dispute-resolution procedure.

Patents, inventorship & ownership

A patent protects inventions that are products, substances, or processes which are new and inventive, giving the owner the right to exclude others from using the invention in a jurisdiction for a limited period.

Hong Kong law does not clearly state who owns IP an employee creates during employment; the general principle is that an employer owns the IP created by its employees in the course of their employment.

The inventor is the "actual deviser" of the invention. A person qualifies as an inventor when they:

• conceived the core idea;
• used their initiative to go beyond a brief, leading to an inventive concept;
• identified the significance of a result that led to the invention.

Activities that would not, on their own, make someone an inventor include: carrying out routine work; offering advice; supervising a project (but not devising the inventive concept); testing the invention; and carrying out follow-up work.

Universities and institutes normally own IP made, designed, discovered, or created by staff/students in the course of employment or that makes significant use of institutional resources — institution-administered funds, or institution-funded time, facilities, or equipment.

Personal contribution to an invention can be recognised by: (1) designation as a legal inventor on the patent; (2) sharing in the final return (if any) from commercialisation; (3) recognition through publications and presentations.

Case: Stern v. The Trustees of Columbia University

Background. László Z. Bitó published papers on prostaglandins' effect on intraocular pressure (IOP) in animals (rabbits, owl monkeys) and believed rhesus monkeys would be good models. Fredric A. Stern, a Columbia medical student (1980), ran an ophthalmology elective in Bito's lab and experimented on rhesus monkeys with topical prostaglandins to reduce IOP — confirming a previously known effect but not proving whether tachyphylaxis (acute development of tolerance to a drug after repeated doses, giving a diminished clinical response) would develop in primates.

Bito continued the work, leading to Columbia's US Patent No. 4,599,353 (Filed 1982; Issued 1986) with Bito as sole inventor. After learning of the patent, Stern sought co-inventorship in the District Court and later the Federal Circuit.

Core inventive concept (per the court): using prostaglandins to treat glaucoma in primates by maintaining reduced IOP without tachyphylaxis. The patent's Claim 1 is "a method for treating hypertension or glaucoma in a primate subject's eye comprising periodically contacting the surface of the eye with an amount of an eicosanoid or an eicosanoid derivative effective to reduce intraocular pressure… and to maintain reduced intraocular pressure" — interpreted as maintenance throughout treatment without tachyphylaxis.

Federal Circuit ruling. Stern did not understand the claimed invention, did not discover that prostaglandins affect IOP, did not discover that repetitive application maintains reduced IOP, and did not conceive the idea of using prostaglandins to reduce IOP in primates. There was no collaboration with Bito; Stern simply repeated an experiment Bito had already done on animals Bito had chosen as models. His contribution is insufficient for co-inventorship.

Case: Chou v. University of Chicago

Background. Dr. Joany Chou and her supervisor Bernard Roizman worked on a herpes virus vaccine. Roizman filed a patent application with himself as sole inventor and received substantial royalty licensing; he told Chou her discovery was not patentable and, in 1996, indicated she would be fired if she did not resign. A University policy stated every patentable invention "shall be the property of the University" and assigned to it.

Chou sued Roizman, the University of Chicago, ARCH Development Corporation (the University's wholly-owned subsidiary), and Aviron (the exclusive licensee), alleging she was the rightful inventor and should be added as co-inventor, and charging:

• fraudulent concealment (deliberate hiding);
• breach of fiduciary duty (duty to look after Chou);
• unjust enrichment (getting rich at her expense);
• breach of contract (policy to compensate the inventor).

District Court: Chou had no ownership interest and lacked standing to challenge inventorship; defendants owed no duty to inform her about patentability.

Federal Circuit: Chou was allowed to challenge inventorship. Under 35 U.S.C. §256, "if a rightful inventor was not listed as an inventor on the patent, that inventor can sue in federal court to have his or her name added." The court found Roizman had failed in his duty to advise Chou of applications on which she may have been an inventor; Roizman and the University breached fiduciary duty under an agency theory; Roizman had unjustly retained the benefit of Chou's research; and the University, violating its express policies, had failed to compensate her.

Supervisor, institutional & personal responsibilities

From both cases, the lecture extracts duties:

• Clarity of inventorship & authorship rights — clearly define researchers' roles and contributions; institutions need well-defined ownership/attribution policies.
• Responsibilities of supervisors & mentors — an ethical duty to guide mentees on authorship, inventorship, and recognition; a duty of care to acknowledge contributions and act in mentees' best interests (career advancement, recognition).
• Honesty & transparency — a duty of disclosure; the system relies on honesty and transparency.

Proactive steps a young researcher can take: read institutional policies; document contributions; have clear conversations with supervisors; and understand the difference between authorship and inventorship.

Research misconduct I: Obokata & STAP cells (RIKEN, 2014)

Haruko Obokata (RIKEN) published two Nature articles in January 2014 claiming that, triggered by a simple stimulus, mature somatic cells could be reprogrammed into pluripotent STAP cells ("Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotent" cells) — an easier method than conventional protocols.

Many experts failed to reproduce the experiment; serious doubts arose. On 1 April 2014 RIKEN concluded it was research misconduct: multiple falsifications — manipulating image data, reusing data from her own doctoral thesis for a different project, and copying from others' publications without permission. Obokata agreed to retract on 4 June 2014; in July she failed to reproduce her own findings under third-party monitoring.

Human costs & aftermath: on 5 August 2014 her mentor and co-author Yoshiki Sasai committed suicide (criticised for inadequate supervision, though not accused of misconduct); Obokata resigned from RIKEN on 21 December 2014; RIKEN's second investigation found all STAP cells resulted from contamination by 3 different types of ES cells, unlikely to be accidental; in 2015 her doctorate was revoked. RIKEN then revised internal rules to require all staff to receive research-ethics education and to stipulate data-recording procedures.

Research misconduct II: Han / NgAgo non-replication

Chunyu Han (Hebei University of Science and Technology) reported NgAgo — a single-stranded DNA (ssDNA)-guided Argonaute endonuclease, an acronym for Natronobacterium gregoryi Argonaute. NgAgo binds 5′-phosphorylated ssDNA of ~24 nucleotides to guide it to the target and makes double-strand breaks, like the CRISPR/Cas system but without requiring a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM). It was reported suitable for genome editing, but this has not been replicated; some reported inability to replicate and others claimed success, leaving ongoing debate with no definitive conclusion.

Research misconduct III: the "Geng" exposé in China (2026)

In April 2026, 耿同学 (Geng) began posting videos exposing alleged academic misconduct in papers by prominent Chinese-university professors. The investigations targeted recipients of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars; alleged misconduct included fabrication and falsification of research data, with some datasets showing unnatural patterns — identical values differing by exactly 0.3 or ending uniformly in 5.

Institutional & official responses: Tongji University confirmed misconduct within weeks, removing Prof. Wang from his deanship and demoting him two professional grades; the first author was dismissed. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) issued a formal notice with penalties including: revocation of funded projects and recovery of allocated funds; bans on applying for NSFC grants ranging from 3 to 7 years; and official criticism recorded in the research-integrity database.

Significance for academic-integrity education: data integrity; accountability at all levels (both senior authors/deans and junior researchers); the role of external oversight; and that academic integrity is a "social responsibility" for a healthy research ecosystem. Misconduct "wastes resources, misdirects entire fields, and, in medical research, can endanger lives."

Case: Autism vs. Vaccines (Wakefield, Lancet 1998)

In 1998, The Lancet published Andrew Wakefield's paper claiming autism symptoms appeared soon after the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine. Methodological problems: small sample size (12 children), no control group, and vague conclusions.

Subsequent, more rigorous studies found no connection:

The Lancet initially exonerated Wakefield et al. of ethical violations/misconduct, but after the UK General Medical Council's 2010 judgment it completely retracted the paper. Still, 1/4 of U.S. parents believe some vaccines cause autism, and there have been 0 credible studies linking them.

Real-world harm: France reported a massive measles outbreak with nearly 15,000 cases in 2011; the U.K. reported more than 2,000 measles cases in 2012; vaccine refusals were largely to blame for a whooping-cough outbreak in California. Wakefield later directed the anti-vaccination film Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe (2016) and received The Skeptic's "Rusty Razor" award (2018) for pseudoscience. In 2019, Trump said "they have to get the shots," and Hviid et al. (Ann Intern Med 2019;170(8):513–520) studied 657,461 Denmark children — again no link.

Case: the CRISPR-baby experiment (He Jiankui)

He Jiankui, associate professor at Southern University of Science & Technology, announced on 25 November 2018 the birth of two gene-edited babies, Lulu and Nana, whose father is HIV-positive. He used CRISPR/Cas9 to delete the CCR5 gene (which produces an immune-cell surface protein HIV uses to establish infection), claiming this gives natural HIV immunity. CRISPR = Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

Conducted in secrecy, bypassing norms: successful birth (mid-Oct 2018), a YouTube interview (19 Nov), AP announcement (25 Nov), and the International Human Genome Editing Summit (29 Nov) — with no peer review, no independent confirmation, and no journal publication. He claimed ethical approval from the Medical Ethics Committee of Shenzhen Harmonicare Hospital, but the hospital said the committee never met to discuss the project.

Not medically necessary: neither infant was proved HIV-positive; established drugs (e.g. maraviroc) already block CCR5; the rationale did not address an unmet need; different HIV strains enter via proteins other than CCR5, so deletion cannot confer complete immunity; and there is no way to determine any benefit.

Safety issues: no animal test before humans; people with natural CCR5 deficiency are more vulnerable to West Nile virus and more likely to die of influenza; off-target effects may unexpectedly edit other genes; long-term effects are unknown.

Poorly executed: in Lulu only half the CCR5 genes were edited (heterozygous, or mosaic — she will likely not resist HIV by He's theory); Nana also has normal copies (unlikely to confer resistance); He planned to mimic the natural delta32 mutation (found in ~10% of Europeans) but created a different, non-target edit of CCR5; off-target effects were claimed "harmless" without strong supporting evidence.

No proper informed consent: the form falsely described the experiment as an "Aids-Vaccine Development Project," used jargon participants (some of whom had never heard "gene editing") would not understand, omitted off-target risks and the fact that gene editing was prohibited/controversial, and resembled a business subcontracting form to absolve the team of liability.

Consequences: China declared He "seriously violated" state regulations and likely faced criminal charges; he forged ethics documents; and he faced possible corruption/bribery charges over how he assembled the team (IVF clinic, other scientists, obstetricians).

Gene-edited monkeys (BMAL1) & animal-research ethics

On 24 January 2019, The National Science Review published a study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Neuroscience: researchers cloned five monkey embryos edited to remove the BMAL1 gene, causing anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia-like symptoms, using CRISPR/Cas9; findings could help treat sleep disorders, diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Unlike He's experiment, this one was authorised and funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai city government. China is the only country with the technology to clone captive primates (still widely used globally); America is the world's largest user of lab chimpanzees. Bioethics experts stressed that ethical issues around animal use are similar to those for humans and must be closely regulated — experiments like these carry an "ethical price."

Global regulation & law on human germline editing

Push for standards. The WHO is assembling a panel to develop global standards. Leaders of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed a commission with other academies to set criteria so scientists cannot "seek out convenient locales for conducting dangerous and unethical experimentation," including an international mechanism for raising concerns.

Chinese law & regulations:

• 2003 — Ethical Guiding Principles for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research: blastocysts used for research cannot be implanted into the reproductive system of humans or other animals.
• 2012 — Regulations on the Management of Human Genetic Resources: major principles include consent to collect, preserve, and utilise human genetic resources.
• 2017 — Biotechnology Research and Development Safety Management Measures: lists R&D involving genetic engineering such as human genetic editing with significant risks as a high-risk level, requiring strict management.

U.S. law & regulations: no federal laws regulate human reproductive cloning or inheritable genetic modification, but the FDA asserts authority over human reproductive cloning, "three-person IVF," and inheritable genetic modification, and vets gene-therapy experiments/products. A 2017 National Academies report says edited embryos should be used in human pregnancies only to prevent or treat "serious diseases or disabilities" with no "reasonable alternative" treatment.

Summary: a scientist's duties

The lecture closes with five duties for scientists:

• Clarify roles — know inventorship vs ownership; get everything in writing.
• Uphold integrity — your reputation for honesty is everything; never falsify data.
• Consider consequences — your work affects public health and society; think beyond the lab.
• Embrace oversight — ethical review and peer scrutiny are protections, not obstacles.
• Combat misinformation — control and suppress scientific misinformation; prevent erroneous findings from misleading others; protect the public's health and welfare from false results.

T01 Course Map — schedule, format & assessment

T01 is not lecture-based — it is hybrid/integrated: lectures and seminars, case studies, presentations, and discussion. Attendance at every class matters; no pre-class preparation is required, but reading, thinking and discussion after each class is. The organising lecturer is Prof. Zhongping Yao (zhongping.yao@polyu.edu.hk), Department of Life Sciences.

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) — an ethics example

The overview lecture's "Ethics examples" section flags Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and the world's first test-tube baby as a concrete ethics topic alongside CRISPR and embryo editing. The English card covers CRISPR and embryos but omits this anchor example that frames the broader reproduction-and-ethics debate.

Kant's formulation of the moral law

The overview's deontology slide quotes Kant directly (not carried into the English card):

Root causes of research misconduct

The Week 3 discussion asks why researchers fabricate or falsify. The lecture answers with systemic drivers the English card never states:

• Hypercompetitive pressure — funding, promotion, and tenure depend heavily on publication metrics (and, per the Obokata discussion, "intense pressure to publish in high-impact journals").
• Reactive oversight — institutional oversight is "often reactive rather than proactive," so problems surface only after publication.

Strengthening institutional self-regulation

The same discussion asks how institutions can detect misconduct earlier. The source's answer:

How funding-agency sanctions deter misconduct

On how penalties actually deter, the source gives the funding-lever rationale the English card's NSFC list implies but does not state:

• Loss of funding eligibility — a career-ending sanction for researchers whose work depends on grants.
• Return of misappropriated funds — investigators must repay allocated money, raising the personal cost of fabrication.

Practice MCQs — Stern & Chou (from the source slides)

These literal multiple-choice items appear in the Week 3 slides but were only summarised in the English card's exam-focus callouts. Reproduced for drill:

STAP aftermath (2016–2018)

The English card stops at Obokata's 2015 doctorate revocation. The source continues the timeline:

• 2016 — Obokata published the book 'Ano hi' (あの日, "That Day"); in it she still maintains the STAP experiment was real and directs suspicions at Teruhiko Wakayama, a former RIKEN researcher.
• 2018 — her last public note was a magazine photo spread, underscoring how far the fallout extended beyond retraction.

Wakefield — the MMR uptake drop

Missing from the English card's vaccine section: the direct behavioural consequence the source records — MMR vaccination rates began to drop after the 1998 paper, feeding the later outbreaks (France ~15,000 measles cases 2011; UK >2,000 measles 2012; California whooping-cough outbreak).