You are a postdoctoral researcher at a university, employed on a fixed-term contract that is just coming up for renewal. You are a member of a research team involving university staff and several PhD students. Your Department is rapidly gaining a reputation as an exceptional place to work, not least because of the research of a colleague, ‘X’. The protégé of the Head of Department, X has published a series of papers in high profile journals which have been described as ground-breaking research, attracting a great deal of interest from the research community and beyond.

The decision on your contract extension will be made by a panel of senior colleagues, including your Head of Department. You think that it is very likely that your contract will be extended for several more years: your research has been well-received, as have a number of articles you have published; you get on with your colleagues and managers, and you have been able to attract the interest of additional funding bodies.

Emily, a PhD student who is part of the same research team as you, brings to you three papers written by X, all published in peer-reviewed, high profile journals. She shows you digital images in the three papers. The images are identical. However, X has described them as denoting the results of a different piece of work in each paper.

You have thoroughly gone over the figures and the data that supports them. Perhaps X, the protégé of your Head of Department, has made a serious mistake in his work? Or has he deliberately falsified information in one or more of the articles?

Questions:

  • What would you do?

  • What do you advise Emily to do?

  • How might the matter be resolved?


https://ukrio.org/publications/case-study-packs/



Last modified: Tuesday, 12 March 2019, 2:04 PM