Transparency, honesty and fairness are central tenets of his training and mentoring philosophy. Dr. Chapkin embraces both scientific rigor and transparency in accordance with NIH ethics guidelines. For example, all his trainees are counseled in the four areas deemed important for enhancing rigor and transparency that applies to the full spectrum of research, basic to clinical. Specifically:
- The scientific premise forming the basis of the proposed research.
- Rigorous experimental design and reporting of unbiased scientific results.
- Consideration of relevant biological variables.
- Authentication of key biological and chemical resources.
It is emphasized repeatedly that Dr. Chapkin expects all trainees will achieve robust and unbiased results. All his trainees participate in program-sponsored seminars and an ethics class offered by several of the Departments with interest in Cancer Prevention. In addition, since he is a member of an NCI-funded T32 post-doctoral training program (T32-CA090301, formerly R25-CA090301) in Nutrition, Biostatistics & Bioinformatics (http://www.stat.tamu.edu/train/), his lab members have the opportunity to interact with statistically oriented trainees (Biostatisticians, Statisticians, Engineers, Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, etc.) who are developing new statistical and computational methods that are tailored to the biology of Nutrition and Cancer.
Transparency and reproducibility in publishing
In this video, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s data integrity manager, Kaoru Sakabe, covers common issues that authors face while preparing manuscripts and the consequences of not following best practices.
Sakabe gave the talk as part of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Research Integrity Colloquia in January.