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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INTEGRITY: Empowering students for Responsible Research Conduct (RCR) through evidence-based, scaffolded learning. +
This course on Research Integrity for High school students consists of 9 modules, each of which has been designed to address the main research integrity issues of most relevance to secondary school students. Empowerment of the student for responsible research conduct is at the core of the INTEGRITY course and each of the modules.
The different modules present concrete situations representing different integrity challenges that touch different core integrity issues such as relialability, honesty, respect and accountability.
Although it is recommended to follow the order of the modules and module timelines, the teacher has a high degree of flexibility with this. This flexibility will allow the teacher to adopt alternative pedagogical approaches and alternative module timelines which are more appropriate to the particular circumstances of the student cohort, class timetable, and any other school requirements.
[[File:High school course logo.png|center|frame]]
This course was developed in the [https://community.embassy.science/c/integrity/26 H2020 INTEGRITY project] by Mariëtte van den Hoven, Miriam van Loon, Hesther van Gulick and Eline Borsboom, and funded by EU H2020.
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ISEED (Inclusive Science & European Democracies) is a Horizon 2020 research project (2021–2024) that explores how lessons from citizen science can be used to foster more inclusive, deliberative democracies in Europe. It investigates democratic participation along four dimensions , knowledge, institutions, technology, and emotion using empirical research like focus groups, discourse analysis, and digital tool development. Led by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and involving partners across Europe and beyond, ISEED runs experiments and co-creates mechanisms for citizen engagement, especially around science-based policy debates such as climate change and public health. +
<span lang="EN-GB">Image alteration with the intent of distorting scientific experiment results is considered a serious research misconduct (Parrish et Noonan, 2009). These manipulations encompass various techniques, such as cropping, colour adjustment, selective enhancement, and duplication, among other techniques (Rossner et Yamada, 2004).</span>
'''References'''
*<span lang="EN-GB">Parrish D, Noonan B. Image manipulation as research misconduct. Sci Eng Ethics. 2009 Jun;15(2):161-7. doi: 10.1007/s11948-008-9108-z. Epub 2009 Jan 6. PMID: 19125357.</span>
*<span lang="EN-GB">Rossner M, Yamada KM. What's in a picture? The temptation of image manipulation. J Cell Biol. 2004 Jul 5;166(1):11-5. doi: 10.1083/jcb.200406019. PMID: 15240566;PMCID: PMC2172141.</span> +
The case describes how an image manipulation scandal evolved in Italy. Enrico Bucci's company was offering publication of meta-analysis services. Bucci had detected the images of gel-electrophoresis analysis contained anomalies while conducting a global search to exclude contaminated literature from his database. A list of such papers were authored by Alfredo Fusco. Out of around 300 papers on which Fusco was first or last author, the team found 53 containing gels with potential irregularities, including one from as far back as 1985. After discovering that there was no academic organization in Italy that dealt with such findings, in February 2012 Bucci contacted the Milan police. +
As managing editor, I view all manuscripts before they are assigned to an editor. Within a 4 week period, I have detected five manuscripts where photographs of either gels or plant materials were used twice or three times in the same manuscript. These manuscripts were immediately rejected.
However, we are not convinced that these are cases of deliberate misleading of the scientific community. It rather seems to us that many laboratories consider photographs as illustrations that can be manipulated, and not as original data. Thus gels are often cleaned of impurities, bands are cut out and photographs of plant material only serve to show what the authors want to demonstrate, and the material does not necessarily originate from the experiment in question.
When the editor-in-chief rejected such a manuscript, a typical response was: “I am surprised by the question and problem you pointed out in our manuscript. I checked the pictures you mentioned and I agree that they are really identical. But please be reminded that the purpose of these gel pictures was only to show the different types of banding pattern, and the gels of a few specific types were not very clear, so my PhD student repeatedly used the clearer ones. This misleading usage does not have an influence on data statistics or the final conclusion”. +
The video provides a brief introduction about problematics related to image manipulation. This video explains the research on image manipulation in the Humboldt-Elsevier Advanced Data and Text Center in Berlin. +
This article addresses challenges in implementing RRI in research practice. With this aim, authors of the article developed a card-based method - IMAGINE RRI, which should encourage researchers to adopt RRI in their research practice. Also, researchers should reflect on how their institutional framework encourages or discourages RRI practices. +
Conducting participatory fieldwork with children can result in a researcher becoming involved in their lives more broadly, blurring the lines around the researcher role. This may be particularly the case when working with children in precarious situations, such as AIDS-affected children, parentless children, child beggars, child laborers, and street children. As educated, relatively wealthy, interested and supportive adults, researchers appear to hold considerable power and children may see this as a potential benefit or asset that could help to improve their situation. Researchers who undertake research with children in these sorts of contexts are generally motived by social justice and seek through their work to help improve the conditions of these children’s lives and others like them. These underlying motivations – a desire to be helped and a desire to help – can create added ethical complexity to participatory research relationships, particularly in relation to expectations, safety and capacity. In this case study, which is somewhat connected to my case study in the Payment and Compensation section on reciprocity in participatory research with children, I draw on an example of an incident involving the police and street children that occurred when I was undertaking participatory research in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. +
The irecs project has developed a four-pillar framework to guide the implementation of research ethics governance at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Research Performing Organizations (RPOs). This policy brief introduces the irecs framework and provides recommendations for action, specifically targeting leaders of HEIs and RPOs. +
This article presents two factual cases of a substantial and very steep improvement in two journals’ impact factor (JIF): Case A demonstrates how the journal FOLIA PHONIATR LOGO, in an attempt to improve its JIF, published an editorial which cited a large number of its own previously published articles;as a result, the journal was revoked in the following year by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). In case B, the journal ACTA CRYSTALLOGR improved its overall impact factor by an astonishing 2,334% following the publication of a single very highly cited article. Because of the way that JIF is calculated, the journal’s high factor was retained for two years. However, in contrast to case A above, the journal in case B was not revoked. +
Improving epistemological beliefs and moral judgment through an STS-based science ethics education program +
This study develops a Science–Technology–Society (STS)-based science ethics education program for high school students planning to major in science and engineering. The program includes the fields of philosophy, history, sociology and ethics of science and technology and other STS-related theories and aims to help solve moral and social dilemmas in science and engineering. The authors conclude that there was significant development in students' epistemological beliefs and moral judgment. +
This article describes developing of a booklet that informs participants of their rights in clinical studies. The aim is to improve informed consent. +
This is a factual case of misconduct by physics researcher Hendrik Schön. +
A graduate student felt that discrepancies between her and her mentor’s findings were due to inadequate testing on the mentor’s part;the mentor contends that the student’s inexperience is the issue. +
Incorporating gender, health, and climate justice in your research: A reflexive question card exercise +
This micromodule introduces a reflexive tool based on question cards designed to support researchers and practitioners in integrating intersectional gender, health, and climate considerations into their research. Developed by Verdonk et al. (2024), the card prompts support thoughtful engagement with public policy contexts, systemic inequities, and positionality. Drawing on the Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis (IBPA) framework, ecofeminist theory, and feminist systems thinking, the cards help participants address equity, voice, and sustainability in the context of planetary health and just urban transitions. +
The aim of this study was to align research ethics education programs with the demands of practice. Research participants were senior researchers who suggest that the development of researchers' decision making should be included into ethics education programs, along with the existing formal rules for research. +
IRFD outlines an open access policy adopted jointly in Denmark in 2019 that aims to increase public access to taxpayer‑funded research while balancing publisher contracts and embargo periods. The fund’s website provides high‑level principles, references national policy, and offers practical grant‑management pages on dissemination and publication, terms and conditions, and openness in assessment. It notes that while the fund supports open dissemination, it does not currently fund APCs and allows limited embargoes within national guidelines. Applicants and grantholders are directed to follow the conditions specified in individual grant letters and to use repositories to achieve compliance when feasible. +
The document 'Scientific values: Ethical guidelines and procedures', developed in 2024 in India, is a national guideline that addresses the principles of research integrity. Authored by Indian Academy of Sciences, and available in English, it targets the research community in India (but also associates to the indian academy of science). It provides clear expectations for responsible conduct in research and defines practices that safeguard honesty, transparency, and accountability. The text outlines responsibilities of both individual researchers and institutions. It identifies misconduct such as plagiarism, data falsification, fabrication, and unethical authorship, while also promoting good practices in publication, peer review, and collaborative research. It emphasizes effective data management, openness in reporting, and respect for colleagues, participants, and the wider community. Institutions are encouraged to create supportive environments through policies, training, and oversight mechanisms. The document serves as an official reference for aligning national research standards with international expectations, reinforcing ethical norms across research fields. +
This case is about scientific fraud in research concerning psychopharmacology. Specifically, it is about the use of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) group of antidepressants that has the potential to trigger suicidality in a subgroup of patients. This is a factual case, linked to companies' abilties to keep clinical trial data out of the public domain. +
