What is this about? (Is About)
From The Embassy of Good Science
A short summary providing some details about the theme/resource (max. 75 words)
- ⧼SA Foundation Data Type⧽: Text
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When you witness a colleague making a mistake, it is sometimes difficult to address it. It is even more difficult to address if the mistake is not an honest error, but an intentional breach of the rules. Do you dare to take action? If so, what can you do? Or… do you turn a blind eye? And what would that mean for you? +
Unfair reviewing refers to a reviewer abusing their position to promote their own interests or unreasonably disadvantage others. Unfair reviewing can occur during the process of peer review of journal manuscripts, grant applications or for colleagues applying for a promotion. +
Convenience sampling is defined as selecting participants based on accessibility or personal influence. Though it may be practical, it raises significant ethical concerns. While not inherently unethical when used transparently, their limitations mean researchers must critically assess the ethical risks involved and consider whether convenience-based approaches are justified. (1) +
Inadequate handling or storing of data or (bio)materials can lead to leaks in sensitive data and a breach in confidentiality. Personal data and (bio)materials should be stored in an organised manner that protects personal information and guarantees confidentiality. Other researchers should be able to access sufficient anonymized data to allow them to verify the results of the study. +
Adequate documentation or ‘note taking’ of the research process is essential for transparent and trustworthy results. Indeed, keeping inadequate notes of the research process is considered a questionable research practice .'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' Inadequate note keeping can lead to ideas or information being forgotten, mistakes in reporting, an inadequate description of the context in which the data were generated, and difficulties for replication of findings. Different disciplines, research institutions, and research teams have different procedures for note taking, e.g. in a notebook or electronically, and different conceptions of what a ‘note’ consists of. In general, note taking serves as a ‘second memory’ in the research process and promotes the quality and transparency of the performed research.
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Ignoring safety risks when planning and conducting a study is a questionable research practice in study design. Not considering potential physical, psychological, social, legal or economic risks can harm researchers, research participants, and wider community. +
This short article will talk about the experimental or study design, its logic and its appropriate use as well as its misuse. +
Not disclosing changes to the research design is considered a questionable research practice.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' At the start of research, the study design should be determined to ensure validity and verifiability. Whilst performing research, it may turn out that the study design contains flaws or is insufficient. Changing the study design without disclosing those changes undermines the transparency of the research process. Altering the design without disclosing the changes provides researchers with the opportunity to present their results in a skewed way. For example, the researcher could select the most spectacular results, or choose a different test that leads to statistical significance.
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Irrelevant research questions are those questions that do not advance scientific understanding. Examples include questions that have already been convincingly answered by others, leading to duplicate research, or that could be answered by performing a systematic review or meta-analysis. '"`UNIQ--ref-00000009-QINU`"' Irrelevant research questions can lead to research waste.
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Sometimes scientists can be faced with incentives that run counter to good science. For instance, in order to obtain a journal publication that will get them a grant or a promotion, scientists may be incentivised to exaggerate their findings, or even to drop out data points that do not fit a hypothesis. Some believe that the evaluation of scientists based on metrics alone (IF of journal publications, h-index, etc.) can encourage sloppy science or outright misconduct.
Journals, peer reviewers, universities, and funding agencies may also be confronted with incentives that do not promote good science. +
Research results are presented in specific manners based on certain interests or perspectives. Polarisation occurs when researchers hold radically opposed views leading to the segregation of the scientific community into groups in part constituted by their opposition to other groups in the field. Polarisation goes beyond mere disagreement. It occurs when researchers begin (a) to self-identify as proponents of a particular position that needs to be strongly defended beyond what is supported by the data and (b) to discount arguments and data that would normally be taken as important in a scientific debate.” '"`UNIQ--ref-00000005-QINU`"'
The same data may be analysed and presented as very different results. “In polarised research scientists come to engage in facting interests instead of revealing interesting facts.” '"`UNIQ--ref-00000006-QINU`"''"`UNIQ--references-00000007-QINU`"' +
Predatory publishing, also called deceptive publishing, is a kind of academic publishing more geared toward making money than generating high quality publications.
Predatory journals have proliferated since the early 2000s. They typically apply a pay to publish model, work with an open access platform, and economize on editorial and peer review services .'"`UNIQ--ref-00000008-QINU`"' As a result, they tend to promise a very swift review process and fast publication. One way to check for predatory publishing is checking whether the publisher is a member of a recognized professional organization committed to best publishing practices (like COPE or EASE).
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Research misbehaviors, or questionable research practices (QRPs), are a threat to research integrity and to the validity of science. While research misconduct, in particular fabrication, falsification and plagiarism have a high impact on science, they rarely occur. Research misbehaviours, however, are estimated to occur frequently. While conceivibly having a lower impact on individual cases, the aggregated impact is estimated to be much higher. '"`UNIQ--ref-00000014-QINU`"''"`UNIQ--ref-00000015-QINU`"''"`UNIQ--ref-00000016-QINU`"''"`UNIQ--ref-00000017-QINU`"'
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Fabrication of numerical data is frequently described as an example of research misconduct that can occur in all areas of research. It can be detected by statistical tools, like the chi-square test for uniformity of digit distributions. +
Preregistration is the act of registering research protocols before conducting the experiments. It enables to state in advance the type of study (exploratory or confirmatory), hypotheses, methodological design and statistical plan that are going to be used.
Preregistration of animal studies belongs to the Open Science movement and enables a comprehensive overview of all (registered) studies, including those that might otherwise remain unpublished. Therefore, it promotes transparency and research rigour.
Although this process is rather common in clinical research, it is not yet standard practice in the preclinical field. According to recent reviews, initiatives are present to promote preregistration of animal studies, but the uptake remains slow [1]
<small>[1] Baker M. Animal registries aim to reduce bias. Nature. 2019;573(7773):297-8, doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02676-4</small> +
Trial registration is the publication of information about the design, conduct, and administration of clinical trials and should be registered before enrollment of the first participant. The information should be published on a publicly-accessible website at no charge, managed by a nonprofit organization, freely available to anybody and searchable electronically. Registration aims 1) to improve the transparency of these trials and 2) to protect stakeholder interests – including the interests of the subjects, the investigators, peer scientists and society in general. +
In a statistical pre-registration, the purpose and type of statistical analysis to be conducted in a study should be disclosed before the study begins. Statistical pre-registration helps to clearly distinguish between hypothesis generating (exploratory) studies, for which statistical significance is not meaningful, and hypothesis testing (confirmatory) studies for which statistical significance is meaningful'"`UNIQ--ref-0000001D-QINU`"'.
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The ORCID acronym stands for Open Researcher and Contributor Identification. An ORCID identifier helps to connect individual researchers with their work. ORCID is a non-profit organization established and introduced in 2009 in the US. As well as individual researchers, the ORCID community includes universities, laboratories, research companies, funders, publishers, repositories and professional societies.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000008-QINU`"'.
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Digital humanities stands for humanities research that uses digital resources, tools and methods. It implies collaborative, trans-disciplinary and computational research, teaching and publishing. These relatively new practices mark an important shift away from printed outputs, which have dominated the production and dissemination of knowledge '"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"'.
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Some codes of conduct and guidelines discuss foundational principles which are relevant for researchers across all areas of research, and practices which are applicable in all disciplines. But there are other codes and guidelines which concern specific disciplines or areas of research. +
