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

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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
Undergraduate Learning in Science Project Working Paper 53.3.7 Communication skills of good as opposed to bad scientists3.3.8 DiscussionA number of students responded to the question how can good scientificwork be distinguished from bad scientific work in terms of evaluatingscientific papers.I think to be a right good scientific worker I think youneed to remain clear, not get lost in your ownterminology ... for someone to pick up your lab book andbe able to follow it 1.E.61....and also referring to scientific papers:.... how well the person gets across to you their thoughts.If they’ve got a better understanding of it then they’regoing to be better at getting across to you their thoughts.3.K.32A summary of the types of responses given by the students is shown in Table3. As this table indicates, students’ responses emphasise empirical criteriafor the conduct of good science, with the critical approach toexperimentation, especially the reproducibility of results and analysis oferrors being seen as particularly important. Less emphasis was given to theinterpretation of results and very little attention was paid to strategicplanning of scientific work.Many of the students also commented on individual scientists needing torelate their work to others in the field. It appears therefore, that in thesecases, there is an appreciation of science as a social as well as an individualpractice.The characterisation of scientific knowledge claims and their warrantingused by students at various points in the interviews is described in section4.2.1. Longitudinal changes in this area are described in section 5.2.1.31
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Undergraduate science research projects and students - School of ...

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