February 2025 Investigator Series
The Division of Scholarly Integrity and Research Compliance’s Investigator Series, offered by the Research Integrity and Consultation Program, provides researchers with a peer-to-peer forum to share ethical considerations that they make during the design, conduct and dissemination of their research. This style of learning opens the door to new perspectives and meaningful conversations in the pursuit of research excellence.
Investigator Series webinars will be 1-hour and are open to all Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff. All Investigator Series presentations provide in-person Responsible Conduct of Research training credit hours towards the National Institutes of Health 8-hour in-person RCR training requirement.
The following sessions will be held on Feb. 25:
Session Time: 11 a.m. - Noon
Although there are many forms of wrong-doing in research, only three fall within the federal definition of “research misconduct”: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Despite being a narrowly defined set of activities, research misconduct cases often highlight the complex relationships between authorship ethics, mentorship, data management, and collaborative research.
This session will use real world examples of research misconduct as the foundation for a discussion about ethical research and innovation.
Session Time: 9:30 - 10:30 a.m.
Previous research has shown that hybrid teams composed of humans and AI outperform teams consisting solely of humans or AI. This superior performance arises especially when humans and AI make different types of errors, which creates room for complementarity. Across a series of studies, it is found that people often fail to capitalize on complementarity. When choosing between a collaborator with different errors (complementary) and one with similar errors (non-complementary), the latter is preferred.
This session will briefly introduce the paradigm and key findings of this complementary-neglect project. The ethical dimensions and implications throughout the research process using the Innovative Research and Ethical Impact framework will then be discussed.
Session Time: 2 - 3 p.m.
Alexandra DiFeliceantonio will discuss the research performed in the DONNUT (DiFeliceantonio Neuropsychology of Nutrition) Lab and how the researchers consider the principles of the Belmont report across research activities.
Session Time: 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
This presentation will outline and contrast regulatory requirements and ethical considerations associated with animal and human-based collaborative research studies pursued within Vincent Wang's laboratory.
February 2025 Investigator Series
Feb. 25 | 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
ONLINE-ONLY
Host and Speakers
Iris Jenkins
Director, Research Integrity and Consultation Program
*Iris will serve as both the event host and as a speaker.
Meng Zhu
Professor and Interim Department Head, Marketing
Pamplin College of Business
Vincent Wang
Associate Professor and Director of Industry Partners Program
College of Engineering
Assistant Professor and Associate Director, Center for Health Behaviors Research
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
About the Series
The Scholarly Integrity and Research Compliance (SIRC) Investigator Series kicked off in 2020 as an enrichment program focused on integrating the tools of ethical analysis into day-to-day research activities, featuring speakers who discussed the ethical foundations of SIRC’s compliance activities.