Integrated Human Practices

Michal Science Communicator 

Nikita Edel

We always start with the same question, and that is: What is good scientific practice for you? What's your interpretation of good scientific practice in general?

Michal Rössler

So, to me, it means especially that the process of generating scientific findings and communicating them is transparent. This means that it can be recapitulated by other people, and that it is guided by the will to get the best or ‘true’ scientific findings, and not by personal or financial interests. That includes transparency about the methods that were used to generate the findings, and to be accountable for mistakes, which can, of course, happen. So, for me, that is kind of what research integrity means.

Nikita Edel

Could you explain what a science communicator does?

Michal Rössler

I think that everybody talking about science is something of a science communicator. In my case, as a professional science communicator who is employed at the university, one of my main tasks is to help scientists disseminate their findings, either by supporting them in their own endeavors, writing texts myself, creating illustrations, establishing contacts with journalists, or by organizing events. That helps reach a wider audience for the scientific findings. 

Nikita Edel

The next question is also a question we do in every interview. That's a dilemma question. 

There is a situation described: After a couple of rounds of reviews, I, as a scientist, discovered an error omission in the data analysis in a co-authored manuscript. At this point, the paper has almost been accepted and the reviewers have never made any remarks about the data analysis. I know that my co-authors do not want to miss out on a chance to publish. I was not the prime person responsible for this part of the data analysis. What would you do if you would be in this situation? Or had contact with someone in this situation?

Michal Rössler

Science should always aim at producing the results that are most likely correct. It should not be the goal to get the most publications or to publish in the highest impact journals, or to act out of other personal interests – even if it might be hard to always live by these standards. The coauthor who is described in the situation should definitely indicate this to the other authors of the study and have it corrected, even if they did not lead the study. I hope this is the answer you got from all interview partners.

Nikita Edel

It's still interesting because people deal differently with such situations.

Michal Rössler

Of course, the way funding often is organized can lead to an outside pressure to publish high impact and to publish a lot. The described error is something that could push back the entire study, and no researcher would be happy about that to happen. But errors occur, and then you need to be open about it. 

Nikita Edel

Then the next question is: do you check the information or the science you are communicating on for any kind of falsification or fabrication of the data?

Michal Rössler

We do check as far as it far as it is possible for us as science communicators. If something seemed strange to me, I would not hesitate to point that out, but so far that never happened for me. 

Nikita Edel

So, if you look at the public, do you have the feeling that there’s a lot of fake science or fake scientific information in the world? Maybe looking at social media or news or something like that. Or do you think the most information regarding science is correct? 

Michal Rössler

It depends on what you mean by ‘fake science’. If you mean actual, scientific findings from researchers or institutions that are falsified, I actually don’t think there is very much of that. Still, even anything is too much. But, on the other hand, there is a lot of false information about science on social media that is generated by other players who are no scientists or actual experts in the field. If you include that, I would say there is a lot of false information about science. That means that you always need to check for yourself when reading articles or postings about science: Who published this? Where is this published? Is this plausible? Is it by an authentic institution or scientist?

Nikita Edel

No, we meant falsified science, because, for example, in the background of the recent Alzheimer’s problems there are still thoughts and ideas which are made up. For example, do you think, looking right now in the light of the corona pandemic, that the way science is communicated to the general public is wrong or should be done differently? For example, on TV, because there were these problems that people just didn't believe in science even though there was a channel where someone tried to communicate. They just didn't believe it. So, do you think something should be made differently?

Michal Rössler

I think there were a lot of very good communication efforts, but also communication efforts that weren´t so helpful. Good scientific communication should not only state findings but also say how such findings are created – explain the background. And, ideally, it should also get into a dialogue with people, so they can ask questions or say what their worries are about a certain topic. During the beginning of the pandemic, a problem was that the communicated scientific findings changed a lot, as the knowledge about the virus increased. So, people weren't so sure what the consensus was. That lead to a lot of insecurity and doubt, which stayed even when more data was available.

Nikita Edel

It's not just that people didn't believe in science, but they started to believe in non-scientific information. Do you have a thought on why people so easily believed that information? Normally you would say, OK, that’s an institute, I believe that institute. But they started to believe in people who don’t have any scientific background. Do you have a thought about why they start to believe such persons?

Michal Rössler

I'm no expert in that field, I can only speculate. I think that many did not only now start to believe in these people you mention, but were already a bit skeptical about science or school medicine before the pandemic. So it might have increased a tendency that was already there. Also, many of the people spreading false information and conspiracy theories were very loud and provided very easy answers. Scientist in scientific institutions did not give such easy answers. They would say things such as ‘evidence indicates’, or ‘there are different possibilities’. And that is something intrinsic to science – it can hardly ever provide such easy answers. That is why it is so important to also speak about how the scientific process works when communicating about science.

Nikita Edel

To look at your work. For example, writing understandable texts for people who are not scientists. Do you look at something specifically so that the text is still correct but easier to understand?

Michal Rössler

Yes, for example it is important to not use too many scientific terms, and to explain those that the text cannot go without. Ideally, this is done by giving examples from everyday life. Many of the texts I write are actually aimed at science journalists. For them I can go more into depth, and will also always provide a link to the original research and contact possibilities.  

Nikita Edel

Do you think that visual things like pictures or graphs help to communicate science?

Michal Rössler

Yes, definitely! But just as with texts, it is important to use them carefully and think of the audience: The graphics used in internal communication between scientists are usually for representing data or processes. In other contexts, they can also to help raise interest, for example a beautiful microscopic picture. So they can help in different ways: decorate or give information, or both. But even for images that are only used to decorate, I still find it important to tell the viewer what it is depicted. Is this a microscopic picture? How was it generated? Is this real or an artistic interpretation? Especially with realistic-looking 3D artistic renderings, I find it really important to say ‘this is not what it actually looks like, but this is an illustration that shows how we can imagine it.’ 

Nikita Edel

If we look for example into advertisement and there is a graph and it is somehow correct, but the scale is made different that it looks a specific way. Do you think that that should be more transparent or that people should be more educated about how to interpret the information the right way?

Michal Rössler

Yes, and I think that is something that applies to all science communication, that to a wider audience as well as that within scientific journals. It should always be clear and comparable what you show in graphics. Sometimes you need to change scales so that the tendency a graphic shows is visible. But it needs to be clearly labelled and maybe even additionally emphasized.

Nikita Edel

For us as an iGEM team, we will need to write a wiki. And we also want to make the wiki not just for the scientific community. We also want to make our website appealing to people who are outside of our scientific community. What tips would you give us so we can make the website more interesting or more appealing to the general public? 

Michal Rössler

Also here, images are very important. Not just data visualizations, but also photographs. I saw on Twitter that you already created illustrations that go with your project description. Those are great! Especially because readers will usually first look at the graphics and only then look at the text. Additionally, I think that including photos or other images from the laboratories can be very interesting, and also empowering for laypersons to better understand the scientific process. Additionally, maybe give some personal insights as well, and introduce the people who work in iGEM and what their motivation is.

Nikita Edel

So we close our interview, always with other dilemma questions, but this time it's with specific answers. We do this to have a comparison between all the interviews we make.

Michal Rössler

So. I always think it's good to include colleagues but I wouldn't say that d) is the optimal answer or best thing to do. I’d say it's kind of something from all of them. It is always good to get a second opinion. And to consider that there is a mistake – maybe there was a wrong setting, and if you find that, you can exclude that measurement.  But if you don't find a reason then it's best to leave it in. Also, I would try to repeat it and see if I saw a similar outliner again.

Nikita Edel iGEM2022

So, today's interview is about the topic of research integrity and fake science. And to begin we wanted to start with an exciting game we had in our ethics lectures. It's called the dilemma game. And we wanted to ask you one question out of the dilemma game. You read it here.

So, this scenario is:

“After a couple of rounds of reviews, I discover an error omission in data analysis in a co-authored manuscript. At this point, the paper has almost been accepted, and the reviewers have never made any remarks about the data analysis. I know that my co-authors do not want to miss out on a chance to publish. I was not the prime person responsible for this part of the data analysis. What do I do?”

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

And now you want me to answer the question? Well, this is a real test because you haven't shown the example to me beforehand, so I'm answering out of my mind. So, the first thing to do is I would talk to my colleagues about my observation. There seems to be an omission, maybe I'm wrong. You never know. Maybe I have misread myself. What was written there, so contact the co-authors, talk to them about it, and if that is an error or an omission, then contact the editor of the journal pointing to this problem and asking to come for an opportunity to either correct the manuscript or have a supplement included with the correct datasheet, or something like that, but that should be no problem at all, I guess.


 Nikita Edel
Good. So the first question would be, what does that mean for you if we talk about research integrity or fake science?

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

The question for me would always be what kind of ethical mistake or act would that be? What sort of principles would be neglected, and how serious is this issue? What is at stake in the ethical meaning of the term, and the answer would be I guess, multifold. because research integrity has different purposes.
One, of course, and perhaps the most important one is that you want the results to be reliable, you want others to be in a position to be able to also perform the same experiments and confirm the results.
It has to do with the reliability of your research results, which then in the end is part of the whole progress of science and progress of knowledge, and that of course is an ethical value. We want science to progress because that means more knowledge. That means more ability for us to improve on the ways we make use of our resources and so on.
It's about societal progress, so that's one issue, but another one, I guess, also, of course, has to do with relations to colleagues with trust, with people not playing with open cards to others, and so on. Therefore, it also has this relational aspect, I guess, and there may be others as well. I guess it's a multifold issue, with the most important one being we want science to be a reliable source.

Nikita Edel

And in that meaning, what ethical problems may arise in the scientific community if someone does research misconduct, meaning they don't follow the rules?

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

Well, one of course is that you spread mistrust and that people tend not to believe each other anymore. If you know that a certain percentage of people are fraudulently misrepresenting their results. Then of course you will always be on the watch, and you will perhaps not so easily share your own data with others. So, the middle or long-term effect of this conduct being something more or less frequent will be that cooperation, scientific cooperation will become more difficult and more reluctant, and that will have an adverse effect on scientific progress as a whole, and we don't want that. I guess that is the main issue.
Besides all those individual issues of people advancing their careers at the cost of others because they have some great publications, perhaps due to their fake data that others don't have. Maybe they have a greater number of papers available, so there are all those systemic effects. The problem is also in the background of how we measure scientific excellence. And people can, if they fake their measures, advance their own careers, and take advantage of those who are the honest ones.

How to find out how excellent is research? And again, this is not what we want of course, from an ethical point of view. So those individual collegial issues also play a role, of course.

 Nikita Edel

To maybe take it to a wider view: There are certainly some cases, for example, of manipulation of medical studies, where this manipulation doesn't only affect the scientific community itself, but it affects the general public. So, do you think the problem is bigger or the same for the general public as it is for the scientific community?

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

Well, the general public. Also, with regard to medical studies, well, the first ones to suffer from bad research, in that case, would be patients. And of course, patients are part of the general public, but they are not the complete general public.
But again, you're right. I mean, we have a special responsibility to protect patients, and vulnerable groups in general, from the bad effects of bad research.
I'm not so sure though that medical research poses a special problem. Of course, it's true if we have wrong data or manipulated data in medical research, that will be a problem for patients immediately. If it is research that is concerned with some form of therapies, diagnosis, diagnostic tools or therapeutic medicine or anything along those lines.

But I would guess that at that stage, maybe I'm a bit too optimistic there, but at that stage, the regulatory framework that we have imposed on study results, publictions, on clinical studies, design and so on and so forth is so tight. Of course, there's no guarantee that nothing bad can happen. Still, it's a much tighter framework compared to other areas of science and scientific research, that I would actually think that, and for good reasons, of course, the danger of having a medical or diagnostic tool that is actually dangerous for patients, the danger as a result of manipulated data is not very big.

Nikita Edel

If we take it out again to biology and for example, with the background of Corona, we of course have I think a nice scenario where I wouldn't say fake data, but just the trust in science isn't as big as it should be, or as we expected. Do you think that fake science could lead to that the general public loses trust in science?

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

I think, of course there's always this kind of danger, yeah? At least I don't think that single events of manipulated research will have a measurable effect on public trust in research, I don't think so. But if you imagine that we would have a roll of those events becoming, then of course, there would be a danger that public trust would be lost. And of course, you know for good reasons I might also lose trust in scientific research if I realize, “Oh well, every new week a new manipulated research turns up.”
So, of course, there will always be a danger lurking in the background. I don't think that also regarding Corona now that public distrust if there was something like that, and there's certainly worse in some areas of society, that this kind of distrust had so much to do with manipulated or fraudulent research. I think there were other reasons why people begin to doubt scientific advice.

 Nikita Edel

We know you're a member of the ethics committee and for medicine here in Freiburg and we just wanted to ask, does the ethics committee have something to do with cases of misconduct or like that?

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

No, not this kind of ethics commission. There are different kinds of all sorts of ethics, commissions and councils and committees, and so on and so forth. So really, I think at least at the level of institutions such as the university, you find all sorts of those ethics committees.
The ethics committee you were referring to is the one that is concerned with research concerning humans or involving humans, which means medical research in the first place. But it can also be research in social sciences involving humans, human participants. And the only task of this ethics committee is to sample all sorts of documents concerning this planned research and then to cheque it whether it appears to be ethically reasonable and acceptable or not, and then send it back to the applicant and ask them to change some details of  their methodology or better patient information sheet or something like that or just say well it looks fine everything, go ahead.
So, it's really an application check procedure and it doesn't have anything to do with data manipulation issues.
The Freiburg University does have some sort of ethics group that would be concerned with those issues, but that would be as far as I know, and I'm not a part of that group, so I'm not 100% sure how it works, but as far as I know, they will be alerted if some suspicion turns up that there has been fraud in research, and then they will be called together and check this individual case.

There is at the university hospital a clinical ethics group of which I am a part where we assist physicians and healthcare workers in ethically demanding situations in patient care. And there is an ethics committee, of which I'm also a part at the university, which is concerned with dual use, research of concern, which is a new one. We will have to find out how working procedures actually will be. So, there's a broad and diverse landscape of such ethics committees, each with its way of working and its own task.
The one having to do with fraudulent research really is, as far as I know, dependent on someone else raising suspicion about some sort of research. You know it doesn't check by itself, you know, is everything OK? At our university, there's no watchdog sitting in checking publications from Freiburg University for erroneous data uses or something like that.

 Nikita Edel

Of course, we as an iGEM-team also want to know how we, as young researchers, in general can educate ourselves? Or how could we ensure that we as a group act more ethically and with more integrity?

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

One way actually, I think would be to become aware of how the systemic framework in some senses also makes possible or even induces fake research. And I've mentioned that before because I think part of the problem really is how do we measure how good research is and we do measure often along the lines of quantitative statistics:
How many publications? How great was the impact factor where the publication was published? And then you have the numbers, and it looks very objective because you appear to be able to calculate who's the best. But the problem with this always is that you can try to publish many, many papers and try to of course to publish them in high-rank journals. And you can enhance these measures by using or by producing fake science if you do it cleverly.
In medicine, for example, one effect of those measures is that many people cited as authors may actually not be authors or only in very minor roles involved in the paper published.
So that’s one of the problems, but another one, of course, is you produce your own data with some very spectacular results in order to be able to publish in high rank journals. An effect would be the publishing of negative results. You had a hypothesis, and it couldn't be confirmed by your experiments, which is also important for science. But try to publish such a result in a high-rank journal. It's not possible. Nobody is interested in those kinds of results. They are too boring.
And if you, as an individual, cannot resist these temptations, then, of course, there's a danger that you will turn into a bad scientist and make up your own data or do other bad things.
And I think really, of course, you can then blame the individual and say, ah, you are bad. You have done something ethically wrong. We don't want that, and of course, that's also right, and we should, I guess, blame this person.  Do that, but, on the other hand, we should not forget that the whole situation is part of the way in which we organize our scientific system.
So, I would actually advise you to first be aware of those systemic effects in order to be able, as an individual, to resist and say “I will not do that. That's not good, even though I know I will have an individual advantage of producing fraud research, I would not do it anyway”.
But at the same time, I would also encourage you to be part of the processes and decisions at your faculty and at your institutions to realize and rethink how we measure who is worthy of becoming a professor or getting a permanent position and so on and so forth. So, remaking those institutional structures, I think, really, that's an important issue for us at the moment.
There's no perfect solution, but we need other ways how to measure who is a good scientist and who isn't.

 Nikita Edel

So, in the end, just because we are a really big fan of this dilemma game, we wanted as a closing to have another question. But this time you have the normal four answer answers you could give.

“When screening my data, I find that there is one extreme observation. What do I do?”

A: “Nothing, it's a part of the theoretical sample for a reason.”

B: “Look for information on the observation. Trying to find qualitative reasons for the defiance. If there is a good explanation for its position, it must be a niche observation since it's part of my theoretical sample, so I leave it in. However, if there is no explanation for its position, I leave it out as it is there either due to measurement error or responsive response bias.”

 C: “I look for information on the observation, trying to find qualitative reasons for the divines. If there is a good explanation for its position, it must be an issue observation, despite my theoretical sampling, there is no place for such anomalous observations, so I leave it out if there is no explanation. If there is no explanation. For this position, I'll leave it in to avoid potential sampling bias.”

D.: “I'll let the colleague review the data and follow her advice, whatever it is.”

 PD Dr. Joachim Boldt

Yeah, D is easy, because you don't have any responsibility for what follows.

Then I'm not a researcher using quantitative measures myself, so this is methodologically speaking unknown alien terrain for me. But as an immediate answer, I would say well, whatever you screen as your data you have to work with. You have sampled those data, you get it, you screen it. So, of course, you leave everything in, and then maybe in the discussion section or conclusion section, you would point to this special data point or something like that and make some arguments why this is an interesting observation. Why this is interesting data or why it isn't? Why it could also be left out and so on and so forth, but this reasoning should be part of the transparent heart of your published research.

This is, I think, what I would say, so, leave it in and discuss it and then all your colleagues can check it and come up with their own assumptions and maybe reiterate the expense or have their own data sampled and see whether this phenomenon turns up again or not. And then the question “Is this data point reliable or not?”, is left to the scientific community to be answered and not to your own individual reasoning about whether this is OK or not.

 Nikita Edel

Thank you very much. I think that would be it.

Jonas iGEM Freiburg  
 
We are the iGEM team from Freiburg. This year we want to address the topic research integrity and fake science and we want to ask different stakeholders about their experiences and learn how to address research integrity and in general learn more about the topic of research integrity. As a first question for you, we wanted to ask you what you consider as good scientific practice? 
 
Prof. Van der Does  
 
So I've been thinking for a longer time on this and I've also tried to look the internet for a nice definition and the one I like the most is: 
Honesty to yourself and to other researchers. 
 
I think that very simply defines for me, scientific integrity. That you know with yourselves, that you're honest to other people. I think if you follow that rule then normally you are, 100% of the cases, OK. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a very long definition. But I think the one that is just honesty is the most important one for me personally. Well, I also looked at the European code of research integrity which is published, I think that every 10 years they make a new one and the latest one they mentioned actually four different topics. One of them is again, honesty. The other one is reliability. That you make sure that you can reproduce things. The other one is respect for colleagues, then that you are honest to other people, and accountability. That you perform the experiments also in an ecological sociological perfect way, but for me I think they all come back to honesty. I mean I think most scientists want to do their best and find something new and be honest about that. 
 
Jonas iGEM Freiburg  
 
Ok, so next we want to have a short question game. You maybe know the dilemma game already because we had it in in your ethic lectures. We choose this question “so close” I can read it out loud one time. 
 
After a couple of rounds of reviews, I discover en error/ omission in data analysis in the co-authored manuscript. At this point, the paper has almost been accepted and the reviewers have never made any remark about the data analysis. I know that my Co-authors do not want to miss out on a chance to publish. I was not the prime person responsible for this part of the data analysis. What do I do? And we left out the answer options this time because we really want to have an open answer on this. 
 
 Prof. Van der Does 
 
This is for me a very easy questions, I will immediately tell everybody that I found this. Actually, I have to remark that it will be different because I'm a scientist that is further in his career. So for me, if I miss out, I have 80 papers it's not such a big problem for me. Of course, if you are a PhD and it is your first paper, I can imagine that this is more difficult. But I always say this is so incredibly damaging to your career. It is better to have a setback for a few months, and I would always say it and say it as fast as you can. The moment you discover it, you have to, if you don't, the problems get bigger and bigger. So, in this case I would say sorry, OK, we've almost had this paper accepted, but this is not OK. We need to correct it and also immediately inform the editor that you solve this. 
 
Jonas iGEM Freiburg 
 
You spoke already about, that in the position of a PhD it will get more difficult because it might be the first paper, so. If the authors are maybe also more advanced in their careers and they refuse to see that as a as an error, what could you do as a PhD? 
 
 Prof. Van der Does 
 
I understand that it's very difficult, but I think it is really important that we learn our students that they make a point against their supervisor. I tell master students who are looking for a group where they want to do their pHD: make sure that you have a supervisor where you have the feeling that you can say something like this. Yeah, we know that there are extremely good groups. Where the head professor is very direct and his it's his way and it's the only way. I would try to avoid these groups, because I think those are the kinds of groups where these mistakes happen. We need to have a professor that pushes you, we need to have a professor that is strict with you but you also need to have a professor that listens to you and if you have concerns you need to be sure that this is OK. Yeah, and I think this is also an answer to your question. Always be honest. Because it's science. You will make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. At a certain moment you will find out if you make a mistake. Yeah, you will feel bad that you made a mistake, but immediately tell your supervisor. If you wait a week, it gets more difficult. If you wait a month, it gets more difficult. The longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes to correct this mistake, and if it's published it's even more difficult. First of all, make sure that you tell it, and second of all, make sure you have a supervisor to whom you can tell it. 
 
Jonas iGEM Freiburg 
 
What might be other factors that especially budding scientists in particular, lead them into falsifying their work? 
 
Prof. Van der Does 
 
Yeah, I think you mentioned it a little bit, I think only for budding scientists, of course, you want to have your first few publications, and I think that even goes to people in their post doc, people that have their first group. I think the pressure is incredibly high to publish. We discuss it also in the lectures. I mean, it's publish or perish. If you don't publish are essentially out. And I have to say how to get over this except for being honest to yourself, I don't really know. I see the pressure in some people, and sometimes you really think that you can understand why somebody would be tempted to do something like this. But there are disadvantages of doing it because it will always be found out. We need to make sure in the scientific community that the disadvantages of being found out are bigger than the advantages of doing something like this. 
 
Jonas iGEM Freiburg 
 
OK, and a little bit more personal because you have already a lot of experience. You have already worked many years as a scientist. Did you also experienced or come in contact with fake science yourself and when? How did you deal with that? 
 
Prof. Van der Does 
 
Yeah, I think every scientist will meet situations and I'm sure that you will also meet situations where another group has performed experiments and you just can’t repeat that. Then there is always the question; is that then fake science or are you doing something wrong? There I find it very difficult to say something. For example, a paper was published. And two years later you look at the paper and you notice that the figure from this paper is the same as that was used two years ago. 
 
Yeah, that's done in a group which you are befriended to. And then you found out that the PhD had left for two years. When they asked for the figure, they just picked from their data. So, they picked the figure that they thought were correct so it's not on purpose, but it's of course it's a mistake, yeah, and it means it just needs to be corrected. If you find that, you need to go to the journal. Nobody else has seen it, but I found myself saying that this picture is wrong. We need to replace them and then you get a correction. Which is maybe negative, but you always need to do that. 
 
And other examples that I've seen this is during or after the PhD defense. It's found out that large pieces of text have been copied from other papers. You very often have a beginning pHD student that doesn't really know how to write nicely. Then of course if you have a perfect text somewhere else you just copy that into the introduction. That doesn't feel so bad of course, as copying results. Which is of course really bad, but also your introduction, you should write yourself. Those are things that unfortunately I've seen happen to people. Fortunately, that was always caught before published, never after publication, but even before publication that should never happen. And especially with the methods. Nowadays, I think there are so many plagiarism cheques. If you do it, you will be found out.  
 
Jonas iGEM Freiburg 
 
OK, so you already spoke now about a few tips you would have for budding scientists. Do you have some tips in general, for when we, as an iGEM team come into a critical dilemma situation regarding fake science. 
 
Prof. Van der Does 
 
Be honest to yourself. Be honest to your supervisor and if your supervisor doesn't listen, go to somebody else. 
 
Yeah, or even here when you see me in the ethics lecture come to me, then I can help you go to the Ombudsman or something because I realise that as a master or bachelor student it is really difficult to step up to your professor. But you just need to do that. Because this might follow you the rest of your life. You publish something that is wrong or you write something in your masters thesis where you know it is wrong. In the end people will find out. 
 
 Jonas iGEM Freiburg 
 
And another point we mentioned already that you are teaching. You teach the ethics lectures for example, but also I know from the bachelor you also teach in other courses and so on. Does the topic of fake science and research integrity play a role in your teaching? 
 
Prof. Van der Does 
 
Of course, in teaching it's very clear. I think it's critical that all students listen to that lecture. And I think also I actually think that it's important that we will give that lecture again for the PhD students. That we've all really heard that. I think the other point where it's important to teach to people is when they do their bachelor studies. When they do their masters. So that you discuss with your students, the plagiarism value, the falsification. Before I mentioned, take a supervisor that listens to you and for me I would say. Then be a supervisor, who people think will listen to them. For me it's always important in the lab that if mistakes are made that you are not too strict on people that make the mistakes so they are not afraid to come to you to tell them. If people are afraid to tell you their mistakes you are on the border of scientific fraud I would say. 
 
Jonas iGEM Freiburg 
 
What further role could it also play? Or should it play in teaching? For example, other lecture alert lectures than ethics. So for example you mentioned before the bachelor thesis maybe, but should it also play a bigger role generally in the bachelor thesis or studies. 
 
Prof. Van der Does 
 
I think as I work here, I think what we do with our good scientists practice lecture. I think that's enough for the bachelor. Like it, I think, especially in the master thesis it should come back again. And in your work discussions, you should give examples of things by other groups where you don't agree. As a supervisor you really have to learn your students how to read papers, how to check if the proper controls are there. Almost every supervisor does that, but that's an essential part, detecting fake science. 
 
Jonas iGEM Freiburg 
 
We want to go to schools this summer and make a small lecture about fake science and research integrity to spread a bit more awareness about this important topic. How can one make other people more aware of fake science? What tips do you have, especially for teaching that topic? 
 
Prof. Van der Does 
 
You can happily use my lecture. I think you wake up people to these kind of things if you give them examples from the real world. In the lectures I discussed Andrew Wakefield, the “impfgegner” [vaccine skeptic] I think people always forget how many things he did wrong in his publication and I think just the list of the 14 things he did that are against good scientific conduct. I think that makes it clear. 

Jonas iGEM Freiburg

 
So now we are nearly at the end of the interview and we have another dilemma game question for you. It goes about outliers. I can read it out one more time. It's called 

”When screening my data. I find that there's one extreme observation. What do I? There are four possible answers. 
 
a) Nothing, it is part of my theoretical sample for a reason. 
 
b) I look for information on observation, trying to find qualitative reasons for the deviation. Is there a good explanation for its position? It must be a niche observation since it is a part of my theoretical sample. I leave it in. However, if there's no explanation for its position. I leave it out as it is there either to my measurement error or response bias. 
 
c) I look for an information on the observation, trying to find qualitative reasons for the deviation. If there's a good explanation for its position, it must be niche observation despite by theoretical sampling, but there's no place for such anomalies observation so I leave it out. If there is no explanation for its position, I leave it in to avoid potential sampling bias 
 
d) Let a colleague review the data and follow her advice, whatever it is. 
 
Prof. Van der Does 
 
Now the good answer is of course: A) yeah, it's part of the data set, and you should just keep it in. So sometimes it happens that you have one point that really lies out and I would say I would only take it out if before I take the point, I already have the feeling that something is wrong with the sample, but if I notice that the point is wrong only after I've done the experiment, then I keep it in, then it stays part of the sample and it just means that you have to repeat the experiment more often to get the error bars smaller again. That's science.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

OK, so this interview is about research integrity with a focus on system of detection, reaction on and prevention of fake science at universities. Today, professor Albers is our guest.

To start the interview, we wanted to ask you what constitutes good scientific practise for you?

Prof. Albers

What constitutes good scientific practise?

I think that one of the things that I find most important is of course because we are doing experimental work, that in principle everybody outside of this lab should be able to repeat the experiments that we do and the results that we get are reproducible. I think this is something that I find extremely important because, in your science, you want to do things that cannot only just be done in your lab, but it should actually be indeed what we call an open science.

That it's clear how you did things. Yeah, I think that reproducibility is one of the big buzzwords that I find really important.

Because if you work with a special system, you want somebody in America to be able to do the same thing, because you don't want to keep it for yourself, it should be open for everybody, that's the point of reproducibility. And there we come to the question of how to do that?

The most important things about how we produce results are in our manuscripts and publications. There, the methods and materials are often, I think, the most important part for the people working in the lab, but they are mostly, I think, badly written, usually because people just want to have the cool results but don’t describe in detail how they did it.

In general, yeah, so I think that's something that I find really important.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

Awesome, very interesting point. We also discovered that issue during our iGEM project.

Prof. Albers

Yes, yes, I mean, you read the methods and then you think „Oh yeah, I just do it like it is there. “

And then you realise, „OK, it's not working “, so that's uncool. And if you don't actually talk to the person, because in science this is what you do, contact the author, and they tell you, „We have these little extra steps. “

I said „ah, that's interesting. So why is it not on the protocol? Also, in the publication, right? “ And this is always the thing like is it indeed written that, well, that somebody else can do it?

And it's especially important for iGEM. I mean because you have to do everything open, right? That's really important. Can somebody else somewhere in India do the same thing or not?

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

Nice. We have the dilemma game with us and we wanted to ask one or two questions of it. The first one is called „so close “. I read it out one time: „After a couple of rounds of reviews I discover an error/omission in data analysis in a co-authored manuscript. At this point the paper has almost been accepted and the reviewers have never made any remark about the data analysis. I know that my co-authors do not want to miss out on the chance to publish. I was not the prime person responsible for this part of the data analysis. What do I do? “

Prof. Albers

I mean, I would for sure contact the last author and say „OK, I discovered this mistake, and we should actually re-analyse the data” because I mean if there's a really clear error then we have to fix that and otherwise I would propose to remove me from the publication.

Because that's not something you want.

I mean, it's hard and I get the dilemma. Especially if you maybe talk about a publication in nature or science or so right? I mean, this can take two years. But you never want to have an error published if you can prevent it.

And maybe I can actually bring it, so I actually experienced such a problem in one of my articles.

 I'm working on a certain project, and I published a paper on that project. I don't know, let's say 2004, and then another one in 2008. And when I came to Freiburg, we actually, because it was about electron microscopy pictures, I went here to somebody said, “OK, this is how the things look like. This is what we want to do with you.” Then she called me actually, saying:

“I found something strange in your two articles published in 2004 and 2008.” I was like “Ok, what?” It turns out that in both publications we had used twice the same picture. That's not good, right? I was really shocked, but it was the same first author. And I was the last author on both I think. But this was like 4 years apart, and the same picture was used, but it was kind of turned around and cut a little bit. I was totally shocked. I was like what the f***. I mean I'm the last author, so theoretically, I should have seen this. But it was four years apart. And I mean as I said it was not something that I directly saw. When you look at it in the end, you likely see because the person from here, she put the two papers next to each other and then you could see it. And nobody has ever seen that, so we were not accused of anything. So, I was going to the first author who now is somewhere else. And I was asking, „OK, what about this? We cannot leave it like this. So what has happened here? “. In the end, it was not really clear what happened, I can still not say why she took the same picture, but we made a correction. Yeah, because you cannot leave it. I mean, nobody found it, but still, it's about a dilemma. Yeah, I mean, I’m the last author. I’m responsible for this.

And sometimes this is really difficult, right? I mean because I have to trust my people.I mean you also know that now. Right now, Barbara, I think is head of the team. She cannot control everything, right? She has to trust you guys from what you do daily and what you report and this is something that we also have to.

And I mean I'm a professor, I'm Dean. I don't see what my people do every day on the bench, so there's a big point of trust. Yeah, and this is something that you have to do to people in the lab because I don't want to distrust people, but it's indeed about, what do you produce and is that correct or not, yeah?

So, this is a really difficult issue for us. Because we always saying the last author should have seen that. I have not seen that; it was four years apart. I mean there was no intention. I mean this is not a big story. We don't need to fake any things there, but the PhD student is, and I still don't know why, she couldn't explain to me. Now we had to correct it. We did it. And so that was fixed and there was no fake news in that sense. Sort of all corrected, but you have to be able to kind of trust. And that's a really big issue. And that's sometimes difficult, so how should I control what they do daily and what they report is correct, right? I mean we are working with an electronic lab book. So that's already different than the paper thing, so I can in principle, cheque, what they do. But they of course also filter what they write in there, right?

What's really important is when you write an article that you have like all the original data. This is also with journals, they ask you to provide the original data. So, because if you make a western blot and you make it further presentable for the paper, you kind of cut out what's important. Nowadays they ask to show the whole picture just to show that you're not just cutting out what you like.

Because that's very easy. I mean with Adobe Photoshop today everybody can do that. 

I mean, Chris, I think talked already about Elisabeth Bik. I see her on twitter all the time. It's amazing. I mean I have to say this really shocks me every day what scientists do to produce data. So, if you look at what she finds, I don't know why people do that because that's not science anymore, right? 

So yeah, it's about trust, and the question is, how can you control as a PI? 

That what you get from your people is not fake. It's really difficult, I think. So, it’s very easy always to say, the last author should have seen that, but there's a big pipeline between, and that's something that's really difficult to control, I think. 

And I said trust because I also once had a certain student:

Because when you do science, I mean you talk about you have a hypothesis, right? So, you have a hypothesis, then you come up with an experiment and you talk with the student about what you think might come out or not.

But science of course is open, right? I don't tell the student this is my hypothesis, and I think I mean this is the right hypothesis and you have to produce the data. This is not how it works, right?

But of course, you go into a research question with an idea.

But we found out after a year that the student in question was producing data to fit our hypothesis, and that I mean, again, that's something you cannot control because it's very difficult to find out. I mean it was just by accident that we saw that he was actually doing this one experiment I don't know 100 times to get the data that sometimes fitted the idea that we had. I was like this is not science.

I mean, I just have an idea and that doesn't need to be right. That's why I like science. I mean, you get surprises, right?

So, this I mean, this is a very difficult grey area. Yeah, and then you also get like supervision things and stuff.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

That already brings up many points for our next question, because as you already mentioned, you are Dean of the Faculty of Biology and also head of the AG microbiology of Archaea at the university of Freiburg.

How could you find out about violation of research integrity at the Faculty of Biology but also in your AG and secure good scientific practise? For example, if someone really does fake science?

Prof. Albers

That's a good question. I mean I think I already kind of covered what I'm trying to do in the group, right? I mean we have very often work discussions where people should only show their raw data. So, I don't want to see the cut blot. I want to see the whole blot and things like that. So, as a PI you can only try like that. But as I said, sometimes it can be difficult because people decide what you see and what you not see right? That's something that you really have to kind of get a feeling for and which involves a lot of trust.

I think you have to make clear to your people: how you can phrase that? I mean the problem, you know, so I mean that leads to there's a lot of pressure, so why do we do this? Or why do students do that? Because they want to have a good paper, or they want to have nice results, and you have to make sure that they know that this is not going to save their career or their life or whatever. I mean, for them, it's at that point really important and has to be clear that you cannot get that by faking, and this has to be clear in the group.

And of course, I mean as the Dean of the faculty, I don't have any control over that. I mean there's no committee that would now check publications of the other professors or so. And I think this has not as far as I know, also in the Community for „Redlichkeit in der Wissenschaft “, I don't know how you translate that. I have not seen I think any case from the biology faculty so far, but that's from the last four years or so. Actually, I think faculty-wise, there's no control or no organisational committee that would look at that or find that out actually.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

OK, and another thing that came up in our mind was, if we find out that in our own working group there is something suspicious going on, someone else might fake data. Which channels are available to report that? Or maybe not directly saying that another person is faking data. But if you have the feeling there might be something wrong. Which channels are there available to report something like that?

Prof. Albers

Yeah, I guess that would be the “Ombudsman” or “Ombudsfrau” for them. They are kind of dealing with it if supervision doesn't work, but of course, the Ombudsman would also be important for this because that person would know whom to contact and what to do. Because I, I guess there should be first discussions with the group leader, and I mean there are certain rules that should be followed that would be always via the Ombudsverfahren.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

You are a member of the Commission of „Redlichkeit in der Wissenschaft“ at the university of Freiburg as a so-called ombudsperson. Can you shortly explain first what the „Ombudsgremium für wissenschaftliche Redlichkeit“ in Germany does, especially in its role securing research integrity?

Prof. Albers

This is in principle what we just said. If there's somebody saying, bringing up the point that maybe also in a thesis or in an article, some experiments are not OK, are misleading or faked, indeed, then the committee has to look at that.

In the committee we always have people from the different faculties so that there should always be somebody who can kind of look at that. Because I couldn't look at a book from philosophy or so, but that would be more like biology related things that I look at. Then you try to look at that yourself and then you would involve other external people that would look at that again to get reviews about that, and then it would be at a certain point discussed in the committee and then there has to be a decision at some point. And then it really depends on the level where we are. Whether this is just one article or whether it is like in several articles.

What should happen afterwards? Yeah, because if you're talking about the thesis, you would say OK, these cannot be taken valid anymore and then you would remove a title from somebody. If it‘s about articles at a certain moment, if it‘s very grave, then the university might have to take action.

If that's the professor of faking 10 years of science, then this has to be like a really high level.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

So as I understand, the Ombudsgremium is only acting when there comes someone saying this or that it's wrong. It is not checking by itself.

Prof. Albers

No, no, this is not indeed our task. So, we only deal with things that are brought to us. That's an important thing.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

OK, just to clarify, you already mentioned that when a professor is faking over several years, if a misbehaviour in terms of faking is detected, it means the end of the career of this person. Or is that not always the case?

Prof. Albers

Difficult.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

So, what is the concrete reaction when someone is faking?

Prof. Albers

I have to be careful there because I think this is a legal thing and I don't know actually what the legal rules are for that.

And I think, this is always I don't know whether you are on Twitter, and I mean there has just been this big case where people faked the Alzheimer research. And I think people are now complaining about that this person is actually not really removed, but gets another NIH grant and you're looking at that and thinking “OK, how can that be?” I think that's really like at the university level, so the rectorate, I think they have to decide what happens then.

I don't know. I mean I cannot remember that since 2014 when I joined here something like that happened. So, I don't know what the university would actually do, but that's really, I guess a really difficult decision because the question is how far do you have to go to be removed as a professor? Because it means you cannot do anything else in your life, right? I mean, your career is over. I don't know what to do then, so it's like, yeah, that's really difficult. And I don't know what the official rules are.

So, whether there's like a stepping thing like if you do this for 10 years, you have to do this or if you have fake ten articles, then that so I don't know.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

1. Now we already discussed some detection systems of fake science in Freiburg and how to secure research integrity here.  Do you know other similar detection systems to maintain research integrity at other universities in Germany but also around the world? Or has each university its own detection systems and how to secure research integrity?

Prof. Albers

I don't know actually really. I mean the question is, of course, whether we can call how we behave a system really or detection system.I mean, in the in the end as you said, it's more if something like this is found, it's more like a personal thing, right?

That somebody says, OK, something is wrong here or that you have a person like Elisabeth Bik who says, this is not OK, and you of course have this website peer pub I think it is called [edit from iGEM team Freiburg: it’s called “pub peer” https://pubpeer.com/ ],. Where actually in manuscripts if somebody finds some mistake, actually they post it there. And I sometimes check. I mean you don't want to be on there actually that's a website where you don't want to be. And there you can see that people like Elizabeth Bik would post a lot there and to make people aware of the fact that people peer watch.

So I have to look it up. I think this is a really important general system where people really kind of post things, this is not OK, and then the authors can actually react to that, and there very often you see that the answers are really fishy and not ok.

But it seems to be really difficult to get articles retracted because it happens very often. So, Elizabeth Bik is commenting on it all the time. I mean, she finds it in nature, science, lots of medical articles which are very obviously faked, and they are not retracted. And I mean then you have to ask nature and science how this can be, right, because as we know on the Alzheimer's case that can really influence a lot of people and a lot of research or pharmacy development of new medicines and you have to kind of get people to do the right thing, right? Indeed, if it's about blots and these images, I mean images are so easy to fake nowadays. Everybody can. You can also make a nature paper if you want, right?

So, it's I think like if you talk about that, so there are more and more people looking into these image forensics and post it on websites like pub peer. And there you can really see, you can just cheque articles and see the comments where the authors have answered. But then indeed retraction happens not very often. So that's the problem now.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

OK, so now maybe a bit complicated question. Do you think that with the ombusgremium and these systems research integrity is maintained at high standards in Freiburg? Or where would you see potential to improve to secure good scientific at the university?

Prof. Albers

Yeah, I think that's really difficult indeed.

I guess we all say we are following the rules of good scientific practise, and I mean in the studies you get lectures about that, and the professors should really know about this, but it's not that we get courses on that again.

I guess that when I got the certificate for being professor, you have to sign that you're following the rules of scientific practise.

I think that was part of that, so this is the only time that we kind of say “I’m gonna follow the rules.”

And yeah, as I said, I mean as a Dean I‘m not looking at the articles of my colleagues to see and cheque how they're doing, right? And there we have trust again. I mean I would trust all my colleagues that they're doing no fake science, but I cannot be sure, right? So, I think this is the situation, I guess. I would say, the university wants of course all of us to really follow the rules, but the question is how you can enforce that.

And I don't know how you could really do that. Except for as I said, we have to sign as professors that we will of course going to ensure that we are not publishing fake science and that we're following the rules.

But there's not a yearly check. And that I mean, I think there's nobody that will test our articles whether there are any problems or not.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

So, it's much about trust, like you said.

Prof. Albers

Yes, I think so yes, yes.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

1. We also spoke with other interview guests about the topic of research integrity and one statement was „The production of fake science is to a large extent caused by the system, how we measure how good a scientist is. “

His opinion was that we need to improve the system, how we measure good scientists? So, first of all I want to know what makes a good scientist in your opinion.

Prof. Albers

What makes a good scientist?

What I said in the beginning, I think a good scientist is somebody who's really enthusiastic to learn more about the system that he or she studies and does this in an open way. Because as I said, I mean as a scientist, you always have a certain hypothesis and this is why you think of a certain way to prove that hypothesis. And then you get the outcome. But what is indeed really important is that you're open to the outcome. So, we should never be like this, my hypothesis has to be right. I've proven I think more times wrong in my hypothesis than right. And that's what makes a real good scientist.

You have to have a hypothesis to think of an experiment that you want to do, but you have to be open and that's I think, that's the beauty of science, actually. 'cause every time that something else comes out I actually be like, “Oh, that‘s cool ”, and then you go on right? So, this is what you want. Yeah, I think that's a good scientist.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

OK, convincing. And so, regarding the statement of this person that we need to change how to measure what good scientists are. Why and in which parts do you agree or disagree with this statement? And if we need to change the measurement of, he gave the example of how many publications you get and in which high-impact journals. Do you agree with that or not?

Prof. Albers

Absolutely. I mean this is the whole problem with science, but you have to somehow measure the quality of a scientist. I think down there at the moment there is no good system to measure how successful I am.

I think all the public metrics and stuff is just very difficult. So, I have to say that when I started doing science as a diploma student, I really liked the way in Germany. Also, the PhD studies because you were not that article driven in that sense, you would just do research for three years, which is great because you're just interested in a question. You just do your work.

I then went to the Netherlands to do my PhD, and there you get told at the beginning you have to have four or five first author publications then you can get your PhD and you're like “OK, that's a different thing”, because then you get what you said in the interview before.

If you think about “OK, how can I put this in a publication?”

And I think a mix of that is fantastic. If you can do a little bit like saying, “OK, I'm just curious. I just want to see what happens here.”

But for your students, that's the problem. You have to get publications because if they want to stay in science, they need the metrics. They need the good papers. I don't know when this will fall. I mean, people are already now saying we should not look at impact factors.

Because sometimes a publication in nature doesn't need to be better than a publication on molecular microbiology, right? But it's about fields. It's so difficult. So, metrics is a thing that hurts the system, but I can also not give you really a solution at this moment because I mean that's heavily debated. Because after the impact factors we had the h-index, now the h-index is bad again. Now we don't know what the next thing is actually.

So, I mean e-life I think is now going to a new thing because also there comes the whole peer review process and publishing and whether you should actually go to a published Open Access, or not. And all of that it's really changing at the moment a lot. So, I think we will see in the next 5 - 6 years a big change in the system, but I'm not totally sure where it will go. But it's clear that the generation today is on the big pressure. That's really clear.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

Interesting. I would also want to speak a little bit about iGEM and some concrete tips maybe you have for us budding scientists.

What tips would you have for us, maybe to secure research integrity during our project?

Prof. Albers

I think that what I said, I guess you guys I think have to do like an open lab book so that in principle everybody can see exactly what you have done and also be open and report to each other a lot now so that you know, as I said, you have to trust each other, but it shouldn't be bad to ask for proof, have you really done this or are you sure you have done it like this? So, I think that's also something that shouldn’t feel like you're controlling, this is always like the border of control and trust.

As I said, I also have to control, but I have to trust at the same time. Like you guys have to do right? So you have to trust what the other student is doing.

But at the same time, for the science, it's really important to document what you've done and that it's clear what you have done and that there's not a magical step that nobody can actually follow. So, I think that's important.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

When we in the iGEM team would come into a dilemma situation, not clearly this way because we are not publishing at the moment, but if we would come into another type of dilemma situation, how could we go on with this situation or which person do you think would be the right one to address when we are in such a dilemma or maybe also when you think of your own working group.

Who could they address to get tips how to deal with this dilemma?

Prof. Albers

I guess I mean who's leading the team, Barbara and Nicole, right?

I mean the question is of course whether at which level the dilemma is right? So, if you think that I mean if it would be the case that you guys have no results and then Barbara says yeah, but we have to look good at the jamboree in Boston, so we do it like this. Then you would have to go to somebody in the faculty, I guess because I think the iGEM team is part of the faculty of biology. Then you would have to actually come to me because you're kind of representing us as a faculty and then you might have to talk to me, I would say. Because Barbara would do a bad job in guiding you in how to do open science.

If it's one student to the other, I mean then you would have to go to Barbara, so I think it's the different levels where you would have to look.

If there would be a hierarchy problem, then you would have to probably come to me, I guess.  Because I see you as a team indeed representing the Faculty of Biology, of course.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

I also want to speak about the fact that at the University of Freiburg violation of research integrity is dealt with via the Ombudsperson. What sort of control or regulation could you think of that could be applied to iGEM because iGEM is an international competition worldwide and at the moment there is no such regulation. Overall, how to secure research integrity there.

There are these conditions on how you should follow the good scientific practise, but there's no real control at all from iGEM itself. So how could you think of how could that be regulated in a better way or in general for teams to follow the rules of good scientific practise.

Prof. Albers

I guess that would be for me really something that comes from iGEM itself, that they would maybe make a gremium, a committee where they have people controlling that good scientific standards are followed. Because you have to have this open website thing right? Do you have to present in between? Or is it only in Boston at the end?

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

In previously competitions it was only presented in Boston. We have a preliminary safety form, but it's only dealing with safety issues and other than that we have the presentation in Boston. So this year, it's in Paris actually. And also, we have our open website.

Prof. Albers

OK, because then I would expect that they actually make a committee and I would maybe ask the iGEM teams in between to for example, like half time saying “OK guys, we want to know what's your idea.” You have to show your progress until then.

Because then it would be clear how far you have made it, and then you cannot make things up so easy. I mean, you could kind of see, OK, if like three months later suddenly all problems are solved and everything looks perfect, you would say maybe we should actually look how they did and how they really did it. 

So, I would maybe install something like that, like an in between check to actually ask these questions and see how far the teams are.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

OK, yeah sounds like a great idea.

To finish this nice interview, we have another dilemma question for you dealing with an extreme observation. And this time we have all answer options, where you can choose one of them or maybe also say all of them are not the right answer. 

So it's called outliers, and it's about “When screening my data, I find that there is one extreme observation. What do I do?” It’s a more concrete question than the first one.

Prof. Albers

I think it maybe depends a little bit on what kind of experiments you do. Because I would probably take B if I do a biochemical measurement where I isolate an enzyme and then I do like enzyme assays.

Because there it's very easy to say, “I just do it another 10 times and then I know”. I don't have only one sample because usually, you say you do triplicates, and then I have done two others that are right and one that lies out. So, I would do it another 10 times and if then I really have like 10 right or 10 the same ones and one that lies out, then I would say, B is OK. But it really depends, if you do like big microbiome data or RNA sequencing or whatever then you cannot just do that and then I think I would probably go for C.

And I mean if this really bothers me, I would always ask a colleague anyways, but yeah.  I think it depends a little bit. So for biochemistry I'm more for B and otherwise go for C I think.

Jonas Widder – iGEM Freiburg

OK, perfect. We're at the end of the interview. Thank you for being part of this series.