Graduate School of Universitas Gadjah Mada held a general lecture on Tuesday, August 29, 2023 with Prof. Dr. Teruna Siahaan. The material He presented was related to research design, research ethics, and the integrity of a researcher. According to Prof. Teruna Siahaan, research has become very important because have direct impact on world development, for examples are development of vaccines, medicinal products, molecular therapy, etc. Apart from that, research can also bring improvement in the field of science and technology through discoveries, answering basic questions about nature, solving problems in various areas of life, improving people’s health and welfare, answering curiosity, and contributing to nation’s development in the future.
As research continues to develop year by year, research ethics is now also become a concern for world researchers. Moreover, there are many problems with scientific research results or the research process itself. For example, reproducibility problem. The reproducibility currently occurs even in well-known journals, such as data manipulation problems. In the last decade, there has been a 10-fold increase in publication misconduct compared to the previous decade. Therefore, it is essential for researchers to understand ethical values in conducting research, processing research data, even up to the publication stage. Some ethical values that researchers must have include:
1. Having high moral values and integrity. A researcher must have honest, fair, objective, and trustworthy characters. Even though we have high hopes for our research results to match our expectations, but we need to remember that research results must same as reality and there is no need to manipulate the data. If the research results are not same as the theory, what we have to do is evaluating the method and experimental design which has been used. A researcher must also respect to other people. As a good researcher, we don’t need to compete each other. On the contrary, collaboration with other researchers is strongly needed, so that the research we carry out can continue to develop. Apart from that, a researcher also needs to work hard, remain productive, and be careful when conducting research in order to get good results.
2. When working in the laboratory, we have to ensure the safety of transgenic animals for the environment. Researchers who work with transgenic organisms must be careful in treating them. Moreover, transgenic animals can move and can escape at any time. Transgenic animals are indeed useful for health research, but it is important to remember that these animals have been inserted with foreign genes, so researchers must be responsible in caring for them and be careful in using them.
3. Researchers also need to pay attention to the safety of themselves or others when using toxic materials or chemical compounds. Researchers must be careful when working with compounds or pathogens that have potential to endanger health and safety. A sense of responsibility needs to be fostered as much as possible, so that the use of dangerous pathogens does not have a negative impact on the surrounding environment or other living creatures.
4. Lastly, Researchers have to avoid scientific misconduct. Scientific misconducts that must be avoided include fabrication, falsification of research reports, and plagiarism. Researchers must have high integrity. Research ethical values must be strictly implemented so that these scientific misconducts don’t occur. According to Prof. Teruna Siahaan, a professional researcher doesn’t need to totally plagiarize other people’s research or be jealous of other people’s research results. He believes that each person has different skills, research focus, and achievements. He emphasized that “We are ourself, we own our time. Just focus and do our best”
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Author: Izza Afkarina
