GrACe | Graduate Centre
Contact
Stefanie Schäfer
+49 (0)521 / 106-87766
pep@uni-bielefeld.de
Content
Hair-raising cases of scientific misconduct, e.g., unethical experiments, fabrication of data, and extensive plagiarism, receive a good bit of media attention. However, not only the spectacular, but also the less spectacular and apparently more common cases of scientific misconduct undermine the necessary trust of scientists in each other, as well as society's trust in science (with “science” broadly conceived, including all academic disciplines).
For this reason, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has come up with recommendations for safeguarding of good scientific practice. The workshop is based on these recommendations and will address topics such are:
- Local, national and international rules and regulations of good scientific practice
- Ethical issues of research design: Are all research question and methods permissible?
- Handling data (e.g., from surveys): Dos, don’ts, caveats
- Handling the work of others: Plagiarism
- Publishing and authorship: Predatory publishing, criteria of authorship
- The relationship of supervisors and supervisees
- Conflicts of interest in academic research
- Institutional handling of scientific misconduct
The morning of the first workshop day will be dedicated to a general introduction to good scientific practice. In the afternoon, we will begin to work on specific topics of good scientific practice. On the second day, we will continue to focus on specific topics and conclude with the question of how to deal with scientific misconduct (individually and institutionally).
A better understanding of good scientific practice will help you not only to avoid accidental misconduct, to recognise questionable behaviour of others and to deal with it appropriately; it will also improve your research and, since good scientific practice is increasingly enforced by the institutions of science, your chances for future research funding.
Methods
The workshop will be conducted in attendance. We will address and use different methods to approach issues of good scientific practice, e.g., case discussions, moral dilemmas, ethical decision-making. Since you should engage actively with the topic, the focus of the workshop will be on discussion, group work and exercises.