What is Ethical Behaviour in Science Research?

Behaving Ethically in Science Research:

What does that mean? Dawn Bazely

Biology Department, York University, Toronto

My Pecha Kucha presentation 29 September 2014 Lab Meeting

206 Lumbers

Academic (Dis)honesty

Do you remember those parts of your course handouts referring to

the York University policy on Academic Honesty?

–YorkU website on Academic Integrityhttp://www.yorku.ca/tutorial/academic_integrity/how.html

“Academic integrity is the term used to refer to some of the most important values of the university

community. ”

Academic honesty

Speaks to assumption that we behave ethically wrt:

Plagiarism

Fabricating data

Overall, it’s about dealing respectfully with your colleagues (supervisors, students, peers)

Avoiding plagiarism

Cite your sources and do due diligence.

This applies to professors as much as to students.

Tweets cited so far.

One Mapúa (OneMapua). “Promote ACADEMIC INTEGRITY. Tweet using the hash tag #NoToCheating #BeABuilderNotADestroyer pic.twitter.com/wq9AWOgqf2.” 21 September 2014, 11:04 a.m. Tweet.

Student Conduct (NCSUConduct). “.@ncstate Stick to your values, act with integrity. bit.ly/1q8IGH1 #thinkanddo #ncstate (Image c/o google) pic.twitter.com/TMTk3OzfEp.” 28 August 2014, 1:31 p.m. Tweet.

Moving beyond undergraduate

learningThe USA’s National Institutes of Health

Ombudsman’s office has wonderful resources:

http://ombudsman.nih.gov/whatsNew.htmland tools:

http://ombudsman.nih.gov/tools.html

UPDATED 18 Sept 2016. The Field Guide is at:https://ccrod.cancer.gov/confluence/display/NIHOMBUD/Home;jsessionid=4C049B34FAE7265CE446E6E88DAEC5F9

Pretty much all science these days is team-based and collaborative

There are frequently conflicts: it’s part of human nature

Knowing how to recognize and handle different behaviours that lead to conflict is key to professionalism and good team experiences

Clock wise from left: from pp 45, 5 & 1 of Bennett, Gadlin & Levine-Findlay (2010) Collaboration & Science: A Field

Guide

Personality type plays a key role in team dynamics

What’s your personality type?

If you haven’t explored this, you should

If only to find out that only about 16% of people actually think like a scientist!

Here’s results from an online personality test that I took

Who watches for ethical behaviour?

In structured courses, profs check your writing for plagiarism, as well as grammar,

The next level of quality control is peer-review

When that fails, websites like Retraction Watch keep track

Tragedy of the RIKEN case

stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) paper, rejected from Science, Cell & Nature journals was eventually published in Nature, and then retracted

Dr. Yoshiki Sasai, a stem cell scientist and deputy director at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe, Japan, and one of the co-authors, who was cleared of science misconduct charges, committed suicide in August 2014

–Retraction Watchfor an analysis of the reviews, see Paul

Knoepfler’s lab blog: http://bit.ly/1ulMGFF

““Truly extraordinary,” “simply not credible,” “suspiciously sharp:” A STAP stem cell peer review report

revealed”

The pressures to produce stunning research results in stem cell research occur in many labs, not just RIKEN: http://bit.ly/1rphA0r

Should scientists be held to higher standards of honesty?

Richard Smith in a British Medical Journal Blog says, yes.

http://bit.ly/10bKAgB

Do you agree?