Good Scientific Practice - Refresher Course (for Scientists)
Seminar
- Date: Nov 19, 2019
- Time: 09:00 AM - 02:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Dr. habil. Alexander Schiller
- Location: Garching
- Room: Seminarraum L5
- Host: IPP
- Contact: hepp@ipp.mpg.de
Course Content:
Codes and values of good scientific practice
o Systematic skepticism: openness to doubt, even about one's own results and about the results of one's own group.
o Reproducibility: The more surprising or the more hoped-for a result, the more important it is – within the bounds of reasonable cost and effort – to independently reproduce the means of achieving the result within the research group before communicating it externally
o Realization of tacit, axiomatic assumptions (awareness of own assumptions)
o "Wishful thinking" motivated by self-interest or morals
o Confirmation bias in planning, pursuing and analyzing experiments
o Systematic alertness to any possible misinterpretations as a consequence of the methodically limited ascertain ability of the object of research (over-generalization)
o Criteria of evidence in interdisciplinary research
o Critical and creative thinking: pitfalls in the creativity process, genealogy of ideas, inspiration versus theft of ideas (Austin Kleon: “Steal like an artist”)
Collaboration between supervisors, colleagues and junior researchers
o Tasks of leadership, monitoring, conflict resolution, quality control
o Active promotion of junior scientists' scientific qualifications (mentoring, thesis committee, etc.)
o Openness to criticism and doubt expressed by other scientists and team colleagues
o Giving and receiving feedback
o Hindrance of the scientific work of others
Handling of data
o Precise observance of discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data
o Reliable securing and storage of primary data for 10 years; clear and comprehensible documentation of the methods employed (e.g. lab book) and all important results
Publishing
o Publication on principle of research results (principle of the public availability of the results of research)
o Fair evaluation and citation of any literature used
o Honesty in the recognition of the contributions of colleagues when writing reviews
o Careful, altruistic and impartial appraisal of colleagues
o Appropriate correction of published mistakes
o Making research results, achieved with public funds, freely available wherever possible
o “Honory authorship”, delaying of reviews, performance of biased appraisals, performance of an appraisal where there is a suspected or actual conflict of interests
Conflicts of interest
o Conflicts with colleagues, group leaders, collaborations, companies, spin-offs, publishing companies, funding agencies
Definition of scientific misconduct
o Definitions of good scientific practice and scientific misconduct
o Degrees and extent of scientific misconduct
o Examples for responsible and irresponsible conduct of research
Dealing with (alleged) scientific misconduct
o Conflict management
o Guidelines from DFG