Undergraduate science research projects and students - School of ...

Undergraduate Learning in Science Project Working Paper 5You could probably tell how good the research was by theamount of references ... because it sometimes, there islists of references at the bottom of your paper .... 1.A.37.In the following example, a student describes the role of the community ofscientists in judging the merit of work in particular fields:Student: One example would be this chap who had thistheory that was at the time very revolutionary andeveryone just went ‘Oh that’s a load of rubbish’ andabout 20 years later he was proved to be right and ithappened to be the basis of biogenetics in biochemistry ...Interviewer: Was it good science then?Student: Yeah, what he did was very logical.Interviewer: But the scientist at the time decided it wasn’tgood science....Student: Yeah, at the time they said ‘That just can’t beright’ and they went about on their experiments, and itjust so happened that the majority didn’t think it wasright. The majority rules. 3.D.37-39.3.3.6 Ethical criteria are involved in distinguishing good and bad scienceFour students answered the question how do you think good scientific workcan be distinguished from bad scientific work by referring to ethical criteria.One student referred to the ethics of certain types of research:.. good scientific work in my personal view is when itactually benefits ... people in general. When it’s not justexploitation of animals of whatever .... The various thingswe have learned .... about the work that has been goingon in, you know, getting a gene from one animal andputting it in another, I don’t find that acceptable. 1.J.51-52.Another student’s comment referred to scientific fraud:I suppose bad scientific work could be any ethicalsituations that come up ... if for example, they hadpinched somebody’s data without saying. 3.E.27.30