Today, I received the course evaluation of a lecture on research integrity. During the Introduction Days, approximately 450 students in the Life Sciences get two lectures on research integrity before they are teamed up and have to prepare a discussion on one topic. In the course evaluation, similar numbers of students find these lectures both the most interesting part of the introduction days as well as the least interesting. For such huge numbers, it is quite challenging to keep their attention for 45 minutes.

Therefore, in previous years we presented the results of a short questionnaire on their own experiences, some of these questions asking about misconduct, most on grey zone questions where there are not always immediate right and wrong answers.

Every year, the open text box in the end would be filled with the same comment ‘it is obvious what the right answer to these questions should be’… The funny thing is that these grey zone area questions will be answered differently in various disciplines. For example, adjusting a hypothesis along the way is not wrong in the Humanities – and sometimes it is even a good thing to scrutinize your question while making progress, but if you need to test hypotheses, this is really problematic.

What is more interesting, is that students, and actually many people in the research community, tend to think that there are right answers to all research integrity issues, and standards that we can apply.

Moreover, there is this tendency to think that research integrity is about avoiding misconduct, and penalties that come along with it. So, in many lectures on research integrity, it is tempting to start with serious cases of misconduct and publicly display these rotten apples to the students as negative role models.

Human as we are, students also like to listen about scandalous details, but will not be stimulated to do anything: it is entertaining, but it does not concern them. After all, they have good inclinations, and are not motivated to enter research practices with the intention to commit fraud or falsify data.

The crux is of course that many issues that arise in research practices have by now been acknowledged as ‘grey zone areas’ or questionable research practices that will not be penalized, but should stimulate reflection on what responsible conduct of research entails. Many issues are inherent part of daily practice, where human beings work together and where all kinds of issues can easily arise, varying from loyalty issues to responsibility issues and possibly also misbehaviour.

What is seriously missing is transparency about all these daily life issues, often claiming ‘this is how we do things here’, or simply expecting novice researchers not to ask too many questions.

Why ask questions about the publication schedule, including the journal names, number of authors on each article and the outline of each article even before the PhD has started the project? Or what will happen to the background study that an RM student has produced, knowing that the professor has to write a book chapter for an edited volume. She is left in the dark if she will be forgotten, acknowledged or become co-author. Therefore, it seems that students do not need to know more about regulations, codes and standards, if we do not help them to address issues that many of them do encounter and that they not always feel up to openly discussing with others.

We will start building capacities in this project starting with high school students, but we will not ignore to address senior researchers as well, because they should become role models how things can be discussed and transparent. Therefore, the take home message of each educational event on research integrity should be empowerment of the students, instead of a warning that they should behave.