Welcome to the Rigorous Reproducible Responsible Research Integrity at UF (R4I@UF) website! Please visit each month for a new case that may be used as a framework for a brief conversation about best research practices in your lab meeting, research conference, journal club, or any research meeting.
April 2025 Case of the Month: Mentoring of Research Staff Members
Dr. Beth Hillary is the principal investigator of a patient-oriented research team that includes senior technician Gillian Roberts, research nurse Kerry Eastwood, and a data manager. Working with tissue biopsies collected by Ms. Eastwood, Ms. Roberts has cloned a gene encoding a trans-membrane protein that seems to be associated with reduced risk of metastatic disease. This discovery in patient samples was unexpected, and Ms. Roberts feels that further characterization of the cells is warranted. Dr. Hillary agrees and indicates that the specimen processing methods used by Ms. Eastwood should be refined and standardized to enhance yield of the cultured cells.
Discussion Questions
- Should the nurse’s role in the project be viewed differently from that of the technician?
- Should the data manager’s role in the project be viewed differently than those of the technician or research nurse?
- Who should be included as co-authors on an abstract based on this work? Who should be given an acknowledgement?
Dr. Hillary is interested in making induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from patient materials and wants cell lines to be derived by a commercial laboratory that does such preparations on a fee-for-service basis. Ms. Roberts wants to continue working with this discovery and argues that Ms. Eastwood can readily obtain more specimens of the required quantity and quality and that Ms. Roberts could readily learn the technology for making iPSCs. Dr. Hillary comments that this would be time-consuming and would unnecessarily slow down Ms. Roberts work in other areas. Dr. Hillary indicates that if Ms. Roberts is interested in learning how to make iPSCs she should enroll in a techniques course at a later time. Ms. Roberts is not happy with this suggestion, as the course will require extra hours beyond the standard workday. Dr. Hillary arranges for samples to be obtained from an additional cohort of patients and is anxious to write an abstract for the upcoming meeting.
Discussion Questions
- Can the supervisor’s decision be justified in your view?
- Is this decision a mentoring issue, a management issue, or both?
- Can you suggest resolutions to this problem?
- What if the technique required were not readily available? What if Dr. Hillary wanted to collaborate with another lab which had the technical expertise to perform the experiments required?
- What if the technician were a trainee?
This case study is adapted from Research Cases for Use by the NIH Community. For more information about mentoring, please see the Mentor & Trainee Responsibilities resources web page.
This website is a service of UF Research Integrity, Security & Compliance and the “RCR on Campus” working group. We believe that research integrity is not achieved by simply taking an RCR course and “checking the box” that training is done. Our vision is to maintain a research culture in our everyday lives as UF researchers and research trainees in which we naturally follow best practices to ensure that the research we do is responsible, rigorous, and reproducible.
To submit a “Case of the Month” for the R4I@UF website, please contact Wayne T. McCormack, PhD (mccormac at ufl.edu).