Irresponsible scientific behaviour

What do researchers do when they suspect a colleague of cutting corners, not declaring a conflict of interest, neglecting proper oversight of research assistants or 'cooking' data? In one study¹, almost all said that they would personally intervene if they viewed an act as unethical, especially if it seemed minor and the offender had no history of infractions. But do researchers behave in reality as they say they would in a hypothetical situation? And is the outcome positive? Surprisingly, these important questions have not been investigated in a systematic way — so we set out to do so....

The types of scientific misconduct that receive most attention are severe cases of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. But many other forms of wrongdoing can corrupt the scientific record, including honest mistakes^{2, 3}and a multitude of purposeful acts, from sloppy record-keeping to a failure to follow ethical rules (Fig. 1; 'Catalogue of wrongs'). Left uncorrected, these 'lesser' forms of irresponsible research may pose even greater threats to science^{2, 4}.

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Tie funding to research integrity

Universities should also establish and post clear rules about authorship, conflicts of interest and data management. For example, when administrators at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, determined that their faculty members were unaware of standard medical authorship rules, such as not allowing guest or ghost authorship, they posted a good set of rules on the web and circulated it to all faculty members. At the end of a year the university plans to follow up with an assessment to see whether the awareness and behaviour of its faculty members have changed.

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Having a good mentor early in your career can mean the difference between success and failure in any field.

Nature’s guide for mentors

All the quotes included here were taken

word-for-word from the applications, either

from proposing mentees or the mentors themselves.

For obvious reasons they have been

depersonalized and are unattributed.

A mentor for life

“M, without any doubt, sees all his interactions with people as lifelong. He always keeps in touch with ex-students, postdocs and so on after they have moved on. Even if he is not directly helping them, he keeps himself aware of their activities and at times informs them of things he believes would be of interest or useful, to them. He genuinely treats his ex-students and postdocs as part of an extended family.”

Many ofthe proposing mentees started out as students of the mentors but later became well-supported colleagues. But a distinctive feature of a great mentor as opposed to agreat supervisor seemed to be a special focus on helping to build the mentee’s career. A natural consequence of the care and effort the mentors put into supporting the careers of their students/staff was that the majority of them became mentors for life: their advice continued to be valued, friendships grew and thelinks were maintained.

“For me there is a difference between a supervisor and a mentor. With the latter you find that you are not simply a student with a research project, but a student with a career in front that the mentor helps you start.”

Personal characteristics

Enthusiasm

“First and foremost, M is incredibly passionate about science. She eats, sleeps and breathes science. Her enthusiasm is absolutely infectious, and it creates a wonderful atmosphere in her laboratory.”

“It is the nature of supervision that you have to explain/teach some key concept time after time as each new student arrives. Each time I had to make it feel to the student postdoc that it was the first time I had ever explained the concept; each time I had to tell it with sparkle to help inspire them to seek to know more. At times it was hard to stay ‘inspirational’; but to fail would have meant to me that I should quit as a supervisor. You need to understand, as an old and wise

friend once said to me, ‘Remember, they stay the same age, you get older!’”

Passion, enthusiasm and positivity were words dominating the majority of the mentee reports. Whether these are traits we can cultivate or create is debatable. The lesson seems to be that it is very important to be as enthusiastic about your students’ research as you are about your own. If you are not, then the question becomes: is the student working on the correct project? If you are not passionate about their project, how can you properly support them? This should also be a lesson to administrators, who may sometimes allocate students to projects and supervisors for expediency rather than a genuine concern for the student or indeed the staff member.

Sensitivity

“When things go wrong, it is important to find out why things happened the way they did. There could be personal factors (sickness, relationship break-ups) that contribute to unhappy decisions or results. Although I may not be able to provide the solution to personal problems, I can provide a sympathetic ear as well as advice or direction to support services.”

This quote speaks for itself but there were a number of examples in which mentors were very sensitive to their charge’s circumstances and showed compassion and understanding. When a student or colleague exhibits unusual behaviour or lack of progress there will be a reason. Mentors need to listen, hear and support. Also, many mentors were sensitive to mentees’ needs that were not strictly professional, such as finding the right balance between work and family responsibilities; coping with cultural transitions after a move from a different part of the world; developing confidence in a culture that may not be welcoming; or opposing ethnic or gender bias

if it arises.

“M also knows that it is important to have a work–life balance. He’s made it easy for a postdoc with young children to return to the lab part time. It’s encouraging as a young scientist to see that there are lab heads who are supportive of people being able to spend time with their family but still have a chance to develop their careers.”

Appreciating individual differences

“Again it is important to cater for personal traits. Some of my student colleagues need to dot every i and cross every t as they design a set of critical experiments that we have all agreed are important. Others, with, I suspect, an equal success rate, need to jump in, risk making a mess of a few highly critical experiments but gain an instant understanding of either what not or what

to try. Allowing both approaches is sometimes difficult, but necessary.”

We are all different in how we work and in what motivates us. The mentees were clearly very appreciative of an ability to carefully craft development activities to enhance and extend personal strengths. Special effort is needed to try to understand all those in a team and deal with them differently. And however much you want that student/colleague to work on that project, sometimes you have to help them make decisions about their career directions.

“Not everybody wants to be a leading researcher and some have skills that make them better suited to other occupations. There is little point in encouraging young people to take on a career to which they may be unsuited or that they will find stressful or uninteresting. So I believe it is

necessary sometimes to encourage them into other directions.”

Respect

“She treats her colleagues, regardless of whether they are doing a PhD or if they are a fellow professor, with the same high regard. In doing so, M inspires confidence in her collaborators.”

It is sadly true that laboratories exist where the PhD students are seen as extra pairs of hands rather than genuine collaborators. Although the supervisors may well be successful and grants be funded courtesy of those extra hands, they will never have the satisfaction of working in the stimulating environments and will never truly be respected themselves.

Unselfishness

“His magnanimity in sharing his own ideas and delight in seeing others succeed has also been an inspiration, not just for myself but for a whole generation of younger scientists.”

“Most importantly, M has no intellectual jealousy. She was always happy to see others succeed,

pushing them forward into the limelight while standing back in the shadows herself.”

There are leaders of some big and important groups who are more concerned with using group members to promote their own scientific standing. Letting your students/colleagues take your ideas and run with them, and being free and willing for them to take credit is not always easy but is always appreciated. What do you lose by allowing them to be lead authors even if the idea was yours?

“His lack of defensiveness was very important to me. On several occasions I’ve published papers that were critical of some aspect of his work — and he helped me to articulate the issues and supported me in getting them published.”

“I believe that it is too easy for mentors to create grand (manipulative) plans for their younger colleagues. I believe it is important for mentors to suppress the desire to paint the grand picture, instead it is imperative that they learn to understand their colleagues and how to assist them to fulfil their dreams.”

“It was not uncommon to hear that she had lobbied for an opportunity for a postdoc to speak at a conference rather than doing so herself because she recognized the value of becoming known, especially given our distance from North America and Europe.”

Support for other than one’s own

“M is just as diligent in fostering careers of people who he thinks can advance science as he is at fostering his own students. This action is consistent with a motive that goes beyond mere ego and represents service to the advancement of science.”

The impact of a good mentor goes far beyond his or her own boundaries. Within the applications were many examples of support outside the mentor’s group. Indeed a number of the mentee support documents were from those who had never actually been in the mentor’s laboratory but whose lives had nevertheless been touched.

Teaching and communication

“M’s enthusiasm was infectious for many undergraduate students, and I have no doubt in saying that her delivery of the subject matter was instrumental in fuelling my interest in X as a subject.”

The tension between research and teaching remains at all universities. Success in both is not mutually exclusive and it was striking, but not surprising, that many of the exemplary mentors were exemplary teachers. Many of the mentees who themselves have gone on to very successful careers and have international reputations in science would not have gone down that pathway if they had not been exposed to their future mentor as a teacher. Those who work in university administration need to remember the benefit of exposing undergraduate students to top scientists to increase the number of graduate students. Up-and-coming young scientists should

put effort into their teaching in order to inspire and interest their future mentees. Good mentors encourage their students to teach as soon as they start their PhD, not only to supplement

their income but, more importantly, to develop skills that will benefit them in the long term.

Also, many of the great mentors were great communicators, not only of science itself but also of enthusiasm for it to diverse audiences such as schools or local societies. This is not a universal talent and can even be damaging to all concerned if done badly. The good mentors appreciated that such activities can be very valuable training for the communicatorand encouraged their students and younger colleagues to develop these skills.

“I first encountered M as a year-11 high school student in a small country town. The Royal Australian Chemical Institute had commissioned M to travel to regional Victoria and put on a ‘chemistry show’. I remember the explosions, the foam tower spilling its contents over the stage, and M pretending that he hadn’t noticed the chemical mayhem around him. And I remember that it was about this time that I became interested in chemistry.”

“Students need experience talking about their research in many different forums. Conference attendance is crucial so that they have the opportunity to discuss with other researchers and to develop new ideas. But it is equally important that students have the opportunity to discuss their work in lay terms, whether it is being presented to parents, teachers, or to doctors and nurses as S has done.”

Tips for mentors

There is no magic formula; these are simply examples of what the mentees thought worked for them.

1. Availability: the open door

2. Inspiration, optimism

3. Balancing direction and self-direction

4. The art of questioning and listening

5. Being widely read and widely receptive

6. The initial project

7. Life after science

8. Celebration

9. Building communities

-Of scientists

-Of people

10. Skill development

-Criticism

-Writing

-Oral presentation

11. Networking

-Use their contacts and promote their students/young staff

-Send overseas

-Advice on career decisions

Conclusion

“Having a good mentor early in one’s career can mean the difference between success and failure in any career.”

“Those who are good mentors get incalculably more out of it than they put into it.”

The Importance of Stupidity

This article features in Jurnal of Cell Science. A very good reeding especially for researchers

The importance of stupidity in scientific research

Martin A. Schwartz
Department of Microbiology, UVA Health System, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA
e-mail: maschwartz@virginia.edu
Accepted 9 April 2008
Journal of Cell Science 121, 1771 Published by The Company of Biologists 2008

Recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We
had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science,
although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school,
went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major
environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned
to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she
said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years
of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.

I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and
her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered
me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science
makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. So
used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel
stupid. I wouldn’t know what to do without that feeling. I even
think it’s supposed to be this way. Let me explain.

For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in
high school and college is that we were good at it. That can’t be
the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world
and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it
too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and
doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If
you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart.

A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole
different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly
frame the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design
and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely
convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing
that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was
somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a
problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts
in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when
Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me
he didn’t know how to solve the problem I was having in his area.
I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew
about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he
didn’t have the answer, nobody did.

That’s when it hit me: nobody did. That’s why it was a research
problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve.
Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It
wasn’t really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial
lesson was that the scope of things I didn’t know wasn’t merely vast;
it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of
being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the
only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

I’d like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a
disservice in two ways. First, I don’t think students are made to
understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard
it is to do important research. It’s a lot harder than taking even very
demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is
immersion in the unknown. We just don’t know what we’re doing.
We can’t be sure whether we’re asking the right question or doing
the right experiment until we get the answer or the result.
Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and
space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant
research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional
or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic
difficulty.

Second, we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students
how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it
means we’re not really trying. I’m not talking about ‘relative
stupidity’, in which the other students in the class actually read
the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don’t.
I’m also not talking about bright people who might be working
in areas that don’t match their talents. Science involves confronting
our ‘absolute stupidity’. That kind of stupidity is an existential
fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown.
Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty
committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong
or gives up and says, ‘I don’t know’. The point of the exam isn’t
to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it’s the
faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student’s
weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort
and partly to see whether the student’s knowledge fails at a
sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research
project.

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing
on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being
ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows
us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel
perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt,
this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the
answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and
emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do
more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other
people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more
comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade
into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries

New Beginning

These days, the pursuit of knowledge is no longer a question of isolated scientists, working alone in their laboratories to discover the secrects of alchemy. Instead it is a global venture with interaction and collaboration between people from all over world. It is now considered normal, and even desirable, for researchers to spend a part of their career in a foreign country and this can be an exciting and rewarding experience.

For me, it is a great privilege to be able to study here in BRC and working from people from all over the world. I have collegues from England, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Thailand and soon we expecting a student from Beijing, China. I normally had my lunch with indians, japanese, chinese, taiwainese and korean student (asian, rice eating group) and chit chat about each other country and cultures.

However, it is not always easy to uproot oneself from familiar surrounding at home and sometimes the move to another country can seem daunting. Some simple things, like how to open a bank account or find out about child care, become more difficult in a foreign country. I spend my first month just trying to open an account bank whilst my husband take care of the children. In addition to that, as a moslem, finding the halal food stuff can be as daunting.

To make our journey and move easier, we can always seek helps. There's always people willing to help us settling. For me I always comfortable asking favors from malaysian family and friends as they really understand our needs. Some people said, we should not stay in our own group (countrymen) as we may not expose to other people culture. For me, why make life complicated, get helps from experienced peoples so that instead worrying about practicalities, we can relax and enjoy the experience.

Journal Club

One important thing I learned here is the importance of reading scientific publication aka papers. We know that already but sometimes we just keep it by ourself. Journal club is a way of discussing scientific papers within your peers. It doesn't have to be directly related to your work but something within your main areas. During my first month of my PhD studentship here in BRC, I was told that I have to prepare a presentation of whatever paper of my choice but not directly relate to my project. It's mean I have to find a paper, read it, understand it thoroughly and present my opinion on that paper in front of all PhD students. That's scary. Never done this..so as a new student at a new dicipline (natural product switch to proteomic) I have to read a lots of papers before I'll be able to decide which one should be presented.

Finally during lunch hour, I picked up a copy of Journal of Cancer Research which I intended to read while having my lunch. I spotted a very interesting paper about automated screening of natural product compounds by using a Zebra fish larve. At least I know natural product, I can ask my husband about the fish and there are a lots of colorful images and figures.. BINGO.

My presentation went well and fell great about it. I was thinking that the studies reported in that paper is applicable and if I have the opportunity, I will definately interested in venturing in that kind of research.

Well, what kind of experience gained from this.... It is not the presentation is matter. It is the reading is the key point. The whole process is vital to nurture the interest and be able to view research in a wider perspective. When we read somebody else's work, we somehow will try to find a link to our own work. This process is very important is research development which we cannot get somewhere or somebody else except find it ourself.

In the future, if I have students, this is a must have activity for them.

New Blog

This is a brand new blog which different from my others blogs. I'll used this blog to compile all academic related issues/publication/links which I would think that will benefited my future work. I shall start with sharing my PhD candidatures experiences and knowledges.