Gilbert Burnham, a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health who co-authored a study on the war in Iraq, has recently been found in violation of a research ethics code by a national watch-dog organization.
Burnham, a professor of international health and the co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Hopkins, published results of a survey taken on Iraqi casualties in the war in an October 2006 edition of British scientific medical journal The Lancet.
The survey's results were initially considered controversial in that they reported that approximately 655,000 Iraqis were casualties of the war, while the U.S. Department of Defense and the Iraq Body Count project stated that thousands fewer had been killed.
In March 2008, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) began an investigation into Burnham's research methods after becoming suspicious of his lack of cooperation with the organization's ethics code.
"The code requires minimum disclosure of basic elements of methodology in terms of surveys when they are conducted," AAPOR Standards Committee Chairwoman Mary Losch said. "An evaluation committee found that that disclosure was not made."
AAPOR's ethics code requires survey researchers to comply with a litany of disclosure standards, some of which include disclosing the exact wording of questions asked, a discussion of the precision of the findings, a definition of the population under the study, a description of the sample design and a summary of each palette categorized. AAPOR maintained that Burnham failed to follow proper procedure, thereby violating the code.
"We had made several formal requests for the key elements, but they were not provided," Losch said. "For all of the key elements, we were only provided with partial information for a couple of them."
The AAPOR investigation was conducted over eight months. The entire process followed a strict schedule of procedures that included an intense review of the methods used by Burnham and his alleged refusal to oblige to the code. The investigation was formally completed on Feb. 4.
Neither Burnham nor the Bloomberg School are members of AAPOR, which is the leading public research organization in the United States, but the results of the investigation may directly affect the perceived validity of the survey, as the research cannot be properly verified.
"Nothing that we're saying here should say that his study is valid or invalid," President of AAPOR Richard Kulka said. "The information to make that judgment wasn't provided. But we put out this standard because if one does not provide information so that one can in principle replicate the study, it undermines its scientific value. That's a principle of science, not just an AAPOR thing."
Burnham could not be reached for comment.
According to Timothy Parsons, the director of Public Affairs at the Bloomberg School, the University has since begun its own investigation into Burnham's research methods.
"There have been a lot of questions raised regarding [Burnham's] study," Parsons said. "The school takes any allegations of scientific or professional misconduct very seriously and is currently doing a review of the study to see whether or not the University's own rules or guidelines for the conduct of research were violated."
Parsons maintained that the school could not comment on whether or not the University would take disciplinary action against Burnham until the internal review's conclusion, which should surface in the near future.
"AAPOR chose to criticize Burnham for not fully cooperating with their own review," Parsons said. "We're not a member of the organization, so we don't know what procedures they followed and we're not sure why they concluded what they did."
AAPOR members maintain that their investigation into Burnham was a necessary procedure to allow other scientists to judge the dimensions of his research, not an attempt to disprove the study.
"We're not trying to undermine anyone's career. Almost everyone would agree that what [Burnham] tried to do was scientifically tough," Kulka said. "Hopkins is one of the top research facilities in the world. Our processes are not meant as an attack on anyone or any institution."
