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Unit 8 Research rigor

Learning outcomes

By the end of this unit you should:

  • know the importance of rigor
  • know the difference between citing, reusing and plagiarism
  • understand falsification, e.g. altering data to make it fit with your conclusion.
  • understand fabrication, e.g. creating data
Rubik

Activity 1 Reseach rigor

Consider how cheating on your research may affect your future.

A young researcher in a prestigeous research unit published a research article in Nature, one of the world's leading journals. This is a fantastic achievement, especially for someone so young. Yet, very soon the press and other researchers began questionning her research. The news programs soon changed their stories from celebrating a young Japanese woman's achievement to accusing her of plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication.

top researcher

Due to the lack of rigor, the publication was withdraw. She also lost her Ph.D, lost her job and obviously lost reputation. What do you thin she is doing now?

Activity 2 Plagiarism

Identify whether Tony plagiarized or not. Provide reasons to support your answer.

Tommy decided to save time. He copied the introduction and method from a different thesis. He founds some nice pictures on Google images and included those. He then completed an experiment and included an original table that he made. He found it difficult to write the dicussion, so he found a discussion written in Japanese, and then used Google Translate to create his own English version.

meaning first, grammar second

Activity 3 Falsification

Decide whether Andy falsified data or not.

Andy was conducted ten experiements, but nine experiments did not produce the results that he wanted to support his research hypothesis. Therefore, he decided to limit the scope of research to the experiment that produced the expected answers. In the final thesis, Andy wrote about the successful experiment, because he did not want to waste the reader's time.

meaning first, grammar second

Activity 4 Fabrication

Consider whether this is fabrication or not.

Jerry was about to do a usability study with three close friends to test his software. Unluckily, his friend's caught flu. So Jerry tested the software himself three times. Each time he behaved in the way he thought that his friends would. He wrote up the study for the three users, but did not mention that he was the only user.

meaning first, grammar second

Activity 5 Research misconduct

Watch this short video (3 min 45 sec) explaining the three types of research misconduct.

Knowledge and application

Activity 6 Explanation in Japanese

Write in Japanese (without plagiarizing) your explanation of how to avoid plagiarism, falsification and fabrication. Provide an example. Submit you work via Slack.

Review

Make sure you know the meaning of the following terms:

  1. rigor
  2. plagiarism
  3. falsification
  4. fabrication