Research Ethics
Course code
ELEC834
Course type
Doctoral Program Lecture
Weekly Hours
2,0
ECTS
3
Term
HS 2020
Language
Englisch
Lecturers
Prof. Dr. Fabiola Heike Gerpott
Please note that exchange students obtain a higher number of credits in the BSc-program at WHU than listed here. For further information please contact directly the International Relations Office.
Course content
Please note: Previous year, the course had been scheduled for four days. We have now changed that to three. Therefore, the following description is not fully accurate yet. However, the content is still representative.
Day 1: Introduction
- Many shades of grey: Case studies to sensitize participants
- Who owns an idea? The problem of (self-) plagiarism and how to avoid it
- How should (co-)authorship be determined? A discussion of concrete examples (e.g., exchanging authorship favors with colleagues, faculty members demanding authorship on a publication coming out of a dissertation)
Day 2: Open Science
- What is open science? An introduction to principles of transparent and reproducible research
- Tools for developing a reproducible research pipeline: Study design, preregistration, and data sharing
- New publishing formats: Replication studies, registered reports, and large-scale collaboration
Day 3: Ethics guidelines – Part I
- New EU data protection laws and what they mean for your research
- How to write an ethics proposal (theory & practice)
- DFG recommendations for safeguarding good scientific practice
- Going global: Are ethical standards about publishing shared globally?
Day 4: Ethics guidelines – Part II
- Team presentations
- How to write an ethics proposal (feedback session)
- Wrap-Up: Researching with Integrity
Class dates
| Date | Time |
|---|---|
| Monday, 09.11.2020 | 13:00 - 18:00 |
| Tuesday, 10.11.2020 | 08:00 - 18:00 |
| Wednesday, 11.11.2020 | 08:00 - 13:00 |
Learning outcomes
Upon completing the course, you should be able to…
- Analyze and review the work of others on ethical standards
- Evaluate your own research in terms of ethics procedures
- Plan your data handling and analysis plan for studies
- Critically discuss publications policies
- Consider alternative routes in the publication process
- Conduct open and reproducible research
Literature
Bhattacharjee, Y. (2013). The Mind of a Con Man. The New York Times, retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-audacious-academic-fraud.html?hp&_r=0Dominus, S. (2017). When the revolution came for Amy Cuddy. The New York Times, retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/when-the-revolution-came-for-amy-cuddy.htmlAcademy of Management (2019). Ethics Video Series. Retrieved from http://aom.org/Multi-Media/Ethics-Video-Series/Ethics-Video-Series.aspx?terms=ethics%20video%20seriesFanelli, D, (2009). How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data. Plos One, 4: 5, e5738. Doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005738Kacmar, M. K. (2009). An Ethical Quiz. Academy of Management Journal, 52, 432-434. Doi: 10.5465/AMJ.2009.41330319Kerr, N. L. (1998). HARKing: hypothesizing after the results are known. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(3): 196-217. Doi: 10.1207/s15327957pspr0203_4Martin, BR, (2013). Whither research integrity? Plagiarism, self-plagiarism and coercive citation in an age of research assessment. Research Policy, 42, 1005-1014. Doi: 10.1016/j.respol.2013.03.011Macfarlane, B. (2010). Researching with integrity: The ethics of academic enquiry. New York: Routledge.Murphy, K. R. & Aguinis, H. J (2019). HARKing: How badly can cherry-picking and question trolling produce bias in published results? Business Psychology, 34. DOI: 10.1007/s10869-017-9524-7Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349: 6251, aac4716. Doi: 10.1126/science.aac4716Office of Research Integrity (2019). The Lab. Interactive Movie on Research Misconduct. Retrieved from https://ori.hhs.gov/THELAB
Exam
Group presentations, individual presentation, group discussion, individual class participation