Month of Integrity - Programme this week

During the Month of Integrity, we especially encourage you to participate in the award-winning Active Bystander Training. The goal of this training is to learn how to deal with problem situations related to scientific, social and/or business integrity by distracting, direct action, delaying or delegating. In this one and a half hour training, you will be equipped with the decision-making skills that you need to overcome fear, self-doubt and any type of intimidation, sexual harassment, bullying and any form of exclusion, based on race, gender, sexuality and religion for example. The training given by Scott Solder (English) and Marloes Siccama (English and Dutch) provides you with communication skills to know what to say and do: how to react if you are the target of inappropriate behaviour and how to react if you witness poor behaviour.

We think it is crucial that everyone follows the Active Bystander Training and therefore we kindly ask you to sign up for one of the training courses below. 

Mindlab is a theatre performance that gets at the heart of the science community. A science-fiction thriller that we can all end up in if we dare to fully live our own truths and experience the impact of our acts. When cognitive dissonance reduction has left our minds...Veni, Vidi, Vici?

What does pressure do to the quality of science that is performed? And what does it do to the scientists that experience it? There exist various forms of pressure: pressure to publish, pressure to make promotion, pressure from a supervisor, and others. We will review a real case (the Buck-Goudsmit affair) where too much pressure led to evidently bad science as well as -though less evident - personal damage. From there we can together look for questions (and maybe answers) that deal with pressure, like: What (and how much) is healthy pressure? How can we signal “bad” (overly, unjust, unrealistic, …) pressure? Can we and how can we design a work environment that provides inherent mechanisms to deal with pressure and signals of excessive behavior? 

Jurriaan Huskens, Full Professor of Molecular Nanofabrication at the Faculty of Science and Technology/UT, invites you for becoming his guest so he can share and discuss his narrative about the past and the presence of academia.  

Workshop 1: Double trouble: Inappropriate image duplications in biomedical research"

16 June, 14.00 - 16.00, TL2275

Science builds upon science. Even after peer-review and publication, science papers could still contain images or other data of concern. If not addressed post-publication, papers containing incorrect or even falsified data could lead to wasted time and money spent by other researchers trying to reproduce those results. Several high-profile science misconduct cases have been described, but many more cases remain undetected. Elisabeth Bik is an image forensics detective who left her paid job in industry to search for and report biomedical articles that contain errors or data of concern. She has done a systematic scan of 20,000 papers in 40 journals and found that about 4% of these contained inappropriately duplicated images. In this workshop, she will present her work and show several types of inappropriately duplicated images and other examples of research misconduct. In addition, she will show how to report scientific papers of concern, and how journals and institutions handle such allegations. Finally, scientific whistleblowing is not without risk - Bik has been threatened with several lawsuits, but has received wide support from the scientific community.

Workshop 2 - "Fake and Predatory Science"

17 June, 10.45 - 11.45, TL2275

Science is about finding the truth and has traditionally been based on trust. But science misconduct, albeit from all times, appears to be on the rise recently. The continuous pressure to publish and monetary incentives have led to an increased number of fabricated papers. In some cases, this fraud is organized, such as scientific paper mills, commercial groups that sell authorships on fake papers. Elisabeth Bik is an image forensics detective who left her paid job in industry to search for and report biomedical articles that contain errors or data of concern. Together with other scientific detectives, she has identified hundreds of fabricated paper mill articles, many of which are being retracted. In addition, she will talk about predatory publishers, which misuse the otherwise-beneficial Open Access publishing model by publishing low-quality, un-peer reviewed articles written mostly by unexperienced researchers. Another lucrative business model is formed by companies organizing low-quality predatory conferences (also called "Spamferences"). In her presentation, Bik will show how to recognize predatory publishers and conferences. She will also give some hilarious examples of authors who pretend to work at institutions that do not appear to exist. 

DINER PENSANT: FOOD FOR THOUGHT EVENT 

Tasteful conversations to empower good practices in science 

A Diner pensant with sufficient food for thought. That is the outline of this event, hosted by Mariette van den Hoven. 

The aim is to creatively stimulate discussion amongst researchers and those involved with research practices, asking ourselves what good science will/should look like.

Which smaller and bigger issues can arise in practices and do people recognize the issues that are presented in their institution? In a friendly atmosphere, a three-course menu is waiting for participants.