In this week blog we are required to write our thoughts on a case or an educational project through the office of research integrity. Their main mission is to oversees and Direct public health service research integrity activities by developing policies and recommending research misconduct findings.
Roaming more about it gave me the feeling of how important the research integrity is, for the researcher himself and the institute that puts her trust in the doer for scientific achievements. Reflecting on that might be hard for me as this issue has not been thought of as a policy or authority. It was always more of an inspirational ethics towards the researcher inner consciousness specially in the educational field. Thus, I looked into the issue of misconduct and what it means: fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in the research or reporting the results.
In the home page of the ORI website, it showed some feedback for some of the misconduct findings, which are plenty, I went into the recent ones out of curiosity. The one I read was for a former professor in a respectful institute, reading more into the report, it described clearly all the details of the misconduct incident, in addition to a clear step of the agreed procedures toward the admitted actions.
This kind of behaviors in my opinion is unacceptable and might lead to destroy your reputation and career path, so It make me wonder what are the reasons that could lead any researcher to do such action.In the other hand, I went again through the website and tried to find beneficial or positive articles about the issue, as I am newly introduced to it, and I found several awards conferences grants and funding opportunities for whom is interested, nevertheless about free workshop exploring issues such as conceptions of privacy in research, ways to protect data and ethical oversight of important research.
I believe that we as researcher have the role of the ORI mission to seek and prevent, not only us from doing such behaviors but support others. If we all shared this responsibility it will become easier to minimize even the intentions.