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Case for Discussion Dr. Seung is the leader of a small research group. She is a highly motivated academic and excels in research, teaching, and service. As part of her commitment to academia, she has welcomed many undergraduate students to work with her as research interns. The current project requires learning some relatively sophisticated research skills, but Dr. Seung was confident that the new student, Karla, would be a quick learner and could work on her own. Because Dr. Seung is typically busy with attending national meetings, writing grants and papers, teaching courses, and serving on committees, she also had virtually no time to meet with Karla on a regular basis. By the end of Karla’s internship, Dr. Seung was very pleased to see that her confidence in Karla was justified by the excellent results reported by Karla. In fact, the results were so good that Dr. Seung wrote them up and succeeded in publishing a manuscript based on the findings. Unfortunately, because of questions raised by a member of another research group, an investigation soon found that the data produced by Karla were either intentionally falsified, or possibly the simple result of not fully understanding what she was supposed to be doing. The investigation committee readily concluded Dr. Seung was not guilty of research misconduct, but they are now trying to decide what responsibility she has, if any, for the data produced by Karla. If the committee asked for your advice on what factors should be considered in assigning responsibility for the flawed data, what would you tell them? used with permission |
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