Responsible Science Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process: Volume II (1993) / Chapter Skim
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2 Professional Societies and Responsible Research Conduct
2 Professional Societies and Responsible Research Conduct
Pages 50-65
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From page 50... ...
Central to the research training experience is the duration of the training period. The period of training usually consists of graduate school and postdoctoral training, although many scientists now begin their research careers during undergraduate and sometimes even secondary education, and most continue to learn from their colleagues throughout their careers.
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From page 51... ...
Where course work includes formal classes in statistics and allows for discussion of the appropriate use of statistical methods, training reinforces good research practice through instilling concepts of research design, formal hypothesis testing, and the application of appropriate statistical analysis. Formal courses in the ethics of professional and research conduct are now quite common in law and medical schools and are becoming common in business schools.
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From page 52... ...
The Importance of the Mentor The research literature generally supports the conventional wisdom that the mentoring relationship is a valuable one. Although the empirical evidence is ambiguous and contradictory in places, research studies on mentorship suggest that a mentor is an asset to the professional life of the young scientist or engineer.4 For example, the productivity of graduate students with mentors may be greater than the productivity of those without mentors.5 Scientists with mentors may be more "self-actualized" than those without.6 Junior faculty with mentors may publish more books, receive more grants, and serve as leaders in more organizations than those without mentors.
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From page 53... ...
For example, some mentors may be extremely resourceful in providing sources of patronage or assistance in securing professional opportunities while failing to maintain personal supervision or regular review of the work of their trainees. Others may provide more immediate guidance and be more accessible for their students, but are limited in their abilities to provide the economic resources or professional advancement that may be critical for young investigators.
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From page 54... ...
And mentors tend to confirm beliefs about the central importance of their social and personal characteristics.~9 Even with respect to practices within the laboratory, rather than within the departmental, professional, or extracurricular lives of their students, good mentors contribute to the personal, social, and creative decisions of their students. Snyder, for example, emphasizes the transmission of creativity in the laboratory in experimental design and choice of research direction-rather than experimental technique and instrument competency as the primary focus of good mentoring.20 The ideal mentor will assist the trainee in pursuit of career goals and in the acquisition of the requisite technical, professional, and social skills for conducting research in a particular field.
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From page 55... ...
Market of Mentors In the world of ideal mentorship, mentors and trainees might find each other through some open market in which each could select the other with an eve toward scientific merit, intellectual and personal An open market of mentorship would reduce the abuse of inequalities in the relationship, because trainees could reject unfair or exploitative mentors in favor of others available on He market. Likewise, mentors could select graduate students who best fulfill their obligations and perform their research.
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From page 56... ...
Training grants may be preferable because they relieve junior graduate students of the burden of setting a research agenda and applying for funds, just at the time the student should be freer to consider research options. Such a recommendation does not necessarily mean increasing spending, but merely changing current funding practices to offset what has been a trend toward nonfungible support in the form of research assistantships.
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From page 57... ...
Size of Research Groups The development of big science may create a laboratory atmosphere that requires more consistent attention to good mentorship practices. As the size of research laboratories expands, even for the beneficent cause of providing for trainees, the quality of the training environment may decline.26 In the highly competitive contemporary environment, laboratory heads may be tempted to make research decisions for the good of the team, rather than for the best educational interests of the trainees, and to use trainees for the instrumental pursuit of a predetermined research goal.
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From page 58... ...
Although industrial ties for trainees may help them adapt to the realities of the contemporary research environment, such ties may bind them prematurely to an industrial culture not completely appropriate for an educational environment. Personalities and Gender Regardless of environmental pressures from big science, industrial science, or competitive science, mentorship is still a relationship between two individuals, and much relies on the personalities and compatibility of the two.
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From page 59... ...
When the relationship is mutually rewarding and supportive, there are often no reasons to dispute the allocation of credit for new discoveries, even if the credit appears to be uneven.33 When conflicts arise, however, the expectations and assumptions that govern authorship practices, ownership of intellectual property, and references and recommendations are exposed for professional and even legal-scrutiny. Mentorship and collaborative research practices rely heavily upon implicit standards and practices that have been shaped by customs and traditions over several decades.
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From page 60... ...
MAKING MENTORSHIP BETTER Recognizing that there is a disjunction between the ideal mentorship experience and the reality of training in research, many groups and institutions have begun to encourage good mentorship practices. These efforts range from issuing training guidelines and definitions of responsibilities to establishing formal evaluation programs and course work.
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From page 61... ...
In a recent document on the role and nature of the dissertation, the Council of Graduate Schools makes several recommendations about the graduate training and He mentoring relationship, including reaching prior, written agreement about access to data and intellectual property rights in collaborative research between mentor and trainee; increasing the availability of information about other graduate students and their faculty advisors and mentors to new graduate students to aid in their selection process; preparing handbooks for faculty and students with guidelines to clarify expectations and mutual obligations in graduate education and dissertation research; and monitoring graduate student progress more closely by departments.43 Such practices as departmental mentorship
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From page 62... ...
NOTES 1. This paper uses the term "trainee" to include both graduate students and postdoctoral trainees in their relationship to senior scientists, but makes distinctions where needed.
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From page 63... ...
, 1990, "The mentor-student relationship," a printed transcript of the Scientific Conduct Seminar Series, July 10, Washington, D.C.
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From page 64... ...
37. For examples, see Harvard University Faculty of Medicine, 1988, Guidelines for Investigators in Scientific Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; and University of Michigan Medical School, 1989, Guidelines for the Responsible Conduct of Research, Medical School Committee to Develop Guidelines for the Responsible Conduct of Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
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From page 65... ...
and Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA) , 1989, "Requirement for programs on the responsible conduct of research in National Research Service Award institutional training programs," NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts 18(December 22~:1.
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