Toxic Labs and Research Misconduct
Toxic lab environments and PIs can lead to more than just work fatigue -- they can lead to research misconduct, as well.
Articles for author: Sarah Hill
Digital Persistent Identifiers and You
Every researcher needs a Digital Persistent Identifier (DPI). As a researcher, what is more important to you than a record of your research and scholarship? A Digital Persistent Identifier (DPI) distinguishes you and your work from that of your peers – and having one will be mandated for those receiving federal funding. Let’s take a ...
Navigating the Fly America Act
Understanding the Fly America Act.
Salami Slicing: A Recipe for Research Misconduct
Salami slicing, breaking a paper on a single study up into smaller “slices” and publishing them in more than one journal, is broadly discouraged and considered unethical. Why does the practice persist? What do PIs believe are the benefits of doing it? Two problems Breaking up research into smaller slices can have serious consequences for ...
What Does Intuitive AI and ChatGPT Mean for Research?
Will an intuitive AI program like OpenAI’s ChatGPT be able to imitate the vocabulary, grammar and most importantly, content, that a scientist or researcher would want to publish? And should it be able to?
Flushing Out Absolutism in Science
Science, like politics, can elicit polarizing opinions. But with an ever-expanding body of knowledge — and the especially dizzying flurry of findings during the pandemic — is it fair to say that views on science are becoming more extreme? Measuring the polarization “A standard way of measuring polarization in the U.S. is asking Democrats and ...
Drop in NSF Proposals: More Proposals Funded?
How have rolling deadlines changed the proposal-funding landscape?
Gone, Baby, Gone
How important is a data management plan for researchers?
Unintentional Plagiarism: Is it Avoidable?
Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s words, ideas, or visuals as if they were your original work. Unintentional plagiarism is plagiarism that results from the disregard for proper scholarly procedures. It’s much easier to commit than one would think, and it has toppled giants in the research enterprise. From 2007-2020, the National Science Foundation ...
Expanding The Story of Your Research with Altmetrics
Is your h index really a comprehensive indicator of your research's reach?
Dark Data
Is it necessary to share ALL your data? Is transparency a good thing or does it make researchers “vulnerable,” like author Nathan Schneider writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, “Why Researchers Shouldn’t Share All Their Data.”
Eric Lander Resigns from OSTP
Fresh on the heels of an Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) integrity overhaul, its leader, Eric Lander resigned in early February. This doesn’t look particularly good for the OSTP, an office trying to quell fraud and increase scientific accountability in society. For instance, the White House OSTP stated: “Violations of scientific integrity should be ...
OSTP’s Science Integrity Overhaul
The OSTP has rolled out a five-pronged approach to increasing the reputation of science in the U.S.
Biden Administration: Following the Science?
Time for a quick pulse-check on the Biden presidency. You may recall his Tweet: “Science will always be at the forefront of my administration,” (@JoeBiden). So, we ask again at the The Big Idea: how has the Biden administration gone about implementing a return to science through appointments, funding and policy? Uphill Battle According to the ...
To Tenure or Not to Tenure: Making the Shift from Academia to Industry
Let’s be honest, it’s always been difficult and now it seems even trickier to get a job in academia with a postdoc. Ending up as a tenured professor is just not in the cards for the majority of Ph.D.s. “In 2020, only 10% of engineering Ph.D. graduates and 16% of those in physical and earth ...
Like A Girl: STEM and the Gender Disparity
Learn how researchers and scientists can give girls a "leg up" in STEM classes and careers.
The Joker: Pranking the Academy
In 1996, a physicist at New York University, Alan Sokol, wrote an article that was published in Social Text. It was entitled, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” It sounds innocent enough, if rather obtuse. Except that the entire article was a joke. Relativism in academia According to Eric Kelderman of ...
On Research Informing Policy
All research is valuable, but research at the University of Houston that informs policy translates to a qualitative improvement in the lives of Houstonians. For instance, Andrew Stearns, a graduate student, used millions of dollars’ worth of commercially collected LiDAR data to study the erosion and deposition of sediment caused by floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey. ...
On Giving Underserved Communities a Voice
In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act that extended Puerto Ricans citizenship in the United States. The first large wave of immigrants from Puerto Rico arrived soon after but were hardly welcomed with open arms by those in the U.S. In fact, they were treated as second-class citizens. Puerto Rican writers have endured ...
The Post-Pandemic 8 to 5
The commute, the water cooler talks, the in-person meetings. Have we missed these things? Or can the research enterprise, for the most part, stay virtual? “Many people who have been working from home are experiencing a void they can’t quite name,” said Jerry Useem in The Atlantic. Maybe getting back to our old routine will ...
The Student Worker vs. The Fellow
Who you hire in your lab matters when it comes to employment regulations. Two students stand in a lab, pipetting their hearts out. They look as though they are doing identical tasks, but one is training and one is working. Which is which? It depends on the funding sources and their requirements, and not necessarily ...
Funny You Should Ask: Does Absence Really Make The Heart Grow Fonder?
“Funny You Should Ask” is The Big Idea Magazine’s recurring segment in which UH professors are asked to weigh in on an idiomatic saying, and their musings on this edition’s adage couldn’t be more different. The pandemic was indeed a strange predicament, as social distancing and isolation became the new normal. We changed the way ...
Is it Teaching or is it Research: When Do You Need an IRB?
When does a professor need an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to provide oversight on their project?
Diversify Your Human Subjects
Diversity and inclusion is important in human subjects research. You want a "representative sample," not a "convenience sample."
‘Behind Closed Drawers’: The File Drawer Effect
In psychology, “the file drawer effect,” coined in 1979 by Robert Rosenthal, refers to the fact that in science, many results remain unpublished, especially negative ones. Publication bias is more widespread than scientists might like to think.
Away We Go!
Travel Do’s and Don’ts for Research Projects Travel expenses can be confusing. There are four main things to consider when deciding whether to engage in business travel. Scan this list for answers to pressing questions regarding expenses and travel audit red flags, which is brought to you by Beverly Rymer, University of Houston Director of ...
Rushing Research
best to contribute and move at warp speed,” said Madhukar Pai, a tuberculosis researcher, in Nature Medicine. He also stated, “There is a fear of missing out. And it’s turned into a feeding frenzy.”
The “Covidization” of Science
It has been – and for a while, will be – everywhere. The words: COVID-19, coronavirus and pandemic. According to an article by Holly Else in Nature, “coined in April by Madhukar Pai, a tuberculosis researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, ‘covidization’ describes the distorting impact of the pandemic on the way science is ...
Diversity and the Tenure Process
The Chronicle of Higher Education, “would the Constitution look like if we rewrote it with the people that make up the American fabric today?
How Researchers Can Cultivate Patience
Aristotle, one of the most famous philosophers and scientists of all time, once said, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” Sound familiar, researchers?
Make Your Lab Greener
Is your lab environmentally sound? Learn how scientists are making their labs greener!
Incidentally … Reporting Lab Incidents
Exploding refrigerator? Chemical splash on the face? These incidents -- and near-misses! -- can be personally devastating and expensive.
NSF’s Quantum Leap
Could we, in a few short decades, be living in a quantum computer-filled world? Will superpositioning and entanglements be the wave of the future?
Dunbar’s Number: How many contacts do researchers really need?
Dunbar's Number is 150 -- that's how many meaningful connections the normal person can handle. Do you need more in your network?
Walk This Way: Shoes To Wear In the Lab
“Closed-toe shoes are mandated by the CDC through the Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL) publication and should be worn by people within the labs,” stated David Brammer, D.V.M.; DACLAM, executive director and chief veterinarian for Animal Care Operations at the University of Houston.
Hey, Don’t Eat That! Food in the Research Lab
Other than being unhygienic and just messy – leading to unsanitary conditions such as sticky keyboards in a computer lab where shared equipment resides (yuck!) – it is extremely dangerous to swallow any number of things found in a lab.
MPIs: Team Science!
It's Team Science to the rescue! Multiple Principal Investigators make teamwork fun!
Summer Salaries: How Are They Calculated?
At the University of Houston and other institutions, summer pay is calculated in a very specific manner.
Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Is free speech for faculty protected? Public universities and academic freedom have many interesting cases to ponder.
Telework and the Research Enterprise
Teleworking in the research enterprise may just may be the new normal.
Auditors Read Your Technical Reports Too!
You know sponsors read your financial reports, but did you know they audit your technical reports, too?
The Science Communicator
Upping the Game for Future Researchers By Lindsay Lewis and Sarah F. Hill “When you allow yourself to fully relate with another person, you’re listening and engaged, riding the waves of uncertainty inherent in any conversation,” said Alan Alda in an interview with Scripps Research in 2020. “When you embrace that uncertainty, rather than try ...
Ready, Set, Primetime!
Making Research More Credible for Public Consumption “In the 17th century, many scientists kept new findings secret so that others could not claim the results as their own. Prominent figures of the time, including Isaac Newton, often avoided announcing their discoveries for fear that someone else would claim priority,” stated the authors of On Being ...
The 24-Hour News Cycle
Why the Constant Barrage of Headlines Adds to the Hysteria “In the old days, on the first day we would report what happened. On the second day, we would tell what the reaction was. On the third day, we would analyze what it means. Now CNN tells you what happened and five minutes later some ...
The Science Conundrum
Exploring the Confusion Among the Masses “If you have diabetes, some research suggests that eating seven eggs a week increases heart disease risk. However, other research failed to find the same connection. Still other research suggests that eating eggs may increase the risk of developing diabetes in the first place. More research is needed to ...
Is There Really “No Place Like Home”?
This is The Big Idea’s reoccurring segment where we ask some of our top professors from across the University of Houston to weigh in on a truism or idiom – a safe place for them to rant, wax poetic or dazzle us with their clever take on age-old adages. Dorothy preferred the pre-twister complacency of ...
Universities Step Up Research for Social Change
Before the Black Lives Matter movement, there were already committees and organizations at colleges around the country trying to change the systemic racism that, much like the virus, had worked its way into every facet of our American life – including within our institutions of higher education. But important seed funding for diversity and inclusion ...
Art in Flux
“Make a salad.” One of the pivotal works of the Fluxus collective by artist Alison Knowles is —like most contemporary art— open to interpretation. Taking advantage of the work as a recipe for automatic participation, University of Houston professor of art history Natilee Harren often teaches this performance art instruction or “event score” in her ...
Sexual Harassment in the Sciences: #MeToo
The #MeToo Movement in the sciences, known by some as #MeTooSTEM, found that 50 percent of women in a science-related career have been harassed. How do we move forward?
Manage Your Data Better: Data Management Plans
A data management plan is invaluable to researchers and to their universities. “You should plan at the outset for managing output long-term,” said Reid Boehm, research data management librarian at University of Houston Libraries. At the University of Houston, research data generated while individuals are pursuing research studies as faculty, staff or students of the ...