Academic standards and scholarly / scientific values
One of the areas my work has touched upon is research (and publishing) ethics and scholarly norms.
(Un/)Ethical control conditions
I have been critical of experimental research in education (and in particular in science education) which both sets out initially that certain types of teaching are ineffective, and then reports how such teaching was deliberately imposed upon students in a comparison or control condition. I have argued (Taber, 2019) that where researchers are 'testing' a pedagogy that they claim has already been widely shown to be effective (even if not yet in their context) it is unethical to compare this with 'traditional' pedagogy that the same authors are arguing is educationally ineffective.
Read about rhetorical experiments
Read about unethical control conditions
Read about a case of hybrid research design?
Making unjustified or falsified claims in research
Sometimes researchers falsify data and this is recognised as a serious breach of standards. This is likely not very common (though we cannot be sure.)
More commonly researchers make claims in research papers that are simply not supported by the evidence and argument presented. Sometimes this may be deliberate exaggeration if the authors are nor concerned with pushing a point of view than genuine research. However, sometimes, researchers may be so persuaded of their own ideas that their:
- they make an argument based on what is likely little more than coincidence with no thought to control of variables or considering alternative explanations
- they obtain a negative (non-significant) results for their data analysis but set this side as they feel they know better, and conclude their outcome was positive.
Read about examples of unjustified conclusions in research
Plagiairism
Plagiarism is a kind of intellectual theft.
One blatent form of plagiarism is to copy someone else text (or figures) and to claim you produced them as originals works.
A more subtle type of plagiarism is to write about ideas derived form other sources without citing the sources. This is more subtle in several ways. For one thing, this is an expectation in scholarly work, but not in general writing, so it is only a problem in some form of writing.
Moreover, there are different convention in different fields about the extent to which citation is expected. Some ideas have become so general, than it is not usual or even possible perhaps to cite the original source. In philosophy it is usual to cite Plato and Aristotle, where as scientists do not need to cite Newton of Dalton or Darwin in relation to ideas they first proposed but which are now taken as canonical and fundamental to a field.
So called 'self-plagiarism' is sometimes used to describe when an author reuses some of their published and presents it as if new. (This can be avoided by always citing where something has been previously published, but if taken to extreme this can lead to accusations of excessive self-citation!) This is not really plagiarism, but substantive re-use of material without acknowledge is generally considered unethical. Moreover, where a block of text or a figure/table is re-used, this may infringe copyright if copyright in this material has previously been transferred or licensed to a publisher.
Protecting scholars right to protect the integrity of their work
I have been campaigning to persuade publishers (such as Oxford University Press) to respect authors' moral rights as established by legal status.
Read 'Defend the moral right to the integrity of your scholarly work'
Dishonest practices by journals and conferences
I have also written about poor practices by journal staff and conference organisers who send dishonest and misleading invitations to scholars – often general circulars masquerading as personally directed letters of invitation, and praising work they have clearly never read (as it has no relevance to the journal or conference concerned). Scholars beware!
Read about 'Journals and poor academic practice'
Read about 'Predatory journals'
Read about 'Conferences and poor academic practice'
Some examples of vague praise used to justify invitations to contribute to various unrelated fields
Some of these journals and conferences seem quite prepared to send emails from named academics who have written (or seen) the message, or even it seems to make up imaginary scholars who seem to have left no trace of any academic work who supposedly work for them!
Read 'Are you still with us, Doctor Wu? Is the editor of a dubious journal a real living person?'
The imperative for discipline-specific educational research
I gave my professorial lecture on the theme:
What is the point of a faculty of education?
The imperative for discipline-specific educational research within university education departments.
Source cited:
- Taber, K. S. (2019). Experimental research into teaching innovations: responding to methodological and ethical challenges. Studies in Science Education, 55(1), 69-119. doi:10.1080/03057267.2019.1658058
