On Research Podcast – Building Trust in Science: The Essential Role of Research Integrity Officers

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1. Introduction and Guest Background (00:00:22) Alexa introduces the podcast, Dr. Karmelita, and outlines the episode’s focus on research integrity and misconduct.
2. Dr. Karmelita’s Role as Research Integrity Officer (00:01:43) Overview of her responsibilities, including education, outreach, quality assurance, and handling misconduct allegations.
3. Path to Research Integrity (00:05:31) Dr. Karmelita shares her unconventional journey into research compliance and the value of diverse backgrounds.
4. A Typical Day in the RIO’s Office (00:09:00) Description of daily routines, team check-ins, case management, and balancing multiple responsibilities.
5. Balancing Education and Investigation (00:11:34) How Dr. Karmelita integrates proactive education with reactive investigations, using data to inform outreach.
6. Common Cases and Issues (00:14:03) Most frequent concerns involve collaborator and authorship disputes, with a focus on interpersonal dynamics.
7. Handling Research Misconduct Allegations (00:16:39) Step-by-step explanation of the process when a misconduct concern is raised, including intake meetings and education.
8. Navigating Ethical Gray Areas (00:19:01) Challenges in balancing protection for whistleblowers and fairness for the accused, and the importance of transparency.
9. Addressing Weaponization of the Process (00:21:16) How the office handles bad faith or retaliatory complaints and ensures due process.
10. Dealing with Unclear Situations (00:22:36) Approach to ambiguous cases: consulting with colleagues, following process, and seeking fairness.
11. Developing Helpful Tools and the Challenge of Discerning Intent (00:24:16) The benefit of developing resources proactively to help guide definitions and processes and the challenge of discerning intent.
12. Changes in the Research Integrity Landscape (00:26:33) Discussion of increased public scrutiny, professionalization, and regulatory changes in research integrity.
13. Building a Culture of Ethics and Compliance (00:29:12) Strategies for fostering a culture of integrity through relationship-building, training, and explaining the “why.”
14. Collaboration with External Bodies (00:33:15) How the office interacts with funding agencies, journals, and internal departments during investigations.
15. Emerging Issues and Trends (00:35:08) Current and future challenges: emotional toll on RIOs, remote work, and managing large-scale research data.
16. Misconceptions About the RIO Role (00:37:36) Addressing misunderstandings about qualifications and the importance of soft skills in research integrity roles.
17. Advice for Aspiring Research Integrity Professionals (00:39:36) Encouragement and guidance for those interested in entering the field, emphasizing openness and learning.
18. Closing and Podcast Information (00:40:12) Final thanks, information about CITI Program resources, and podcast credits.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: So a lot of the outreach I’ve been doing lately has been about dispelling myths around research integrity. And one of those myths, I think, at least from my observations, is that it’s about the science, because more often it’s about the people conducting the science.

Alexa McClellan: Hello and welcome to On Research with CITI program, where we discuss issues that impact scientific research and research compliance. I’m your host, Alexa McClellan.

Today we’re stepping behind the scenes into a critical but often invisible part of the research world, maintaining integrity. Joining us is Dr. Courtney Karmelita, executive director of Ethical Research and Outreach at Penn State. Dr. Karmelita works at the crossroads of science, ethics, and trust, investigating allegations of misconduct, guiding researchers through ethical dilemmas, and helping ensure that the research enterprise remains credible and responsible.

In today’s conversation, we’ll talk about what really happens when concerns are raised, how institutions handle investigations, the challenges of navigating gray areas, and why a culture of integrity matters now more than ever. Whether you’re a student, a researcher, or simply curious about how science stays trustworthy, this episode is for you.

Hello, Courtney, and thank you for joining us today.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Alexa McClellan: So I’m really excited to talk about the ethical and practical dimensions of what you do. But before that, can you start by getting us a broad overview of your role as a research integrity officer?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, well, I think most research integrity officers, I wear a number of hats. So while being a RIO in and of itself could probably be a full-time role, I also oversee our education and outreach program as well as our quality assurance program, and I’m also the chief of staff for the Office for Research Protections of Penn State.

But in terms of being a RIO, I see my role as being preventative in promoting education, responsible conduct of research, getting out in front of the research community. When I first became a RIO, I really made it my mission to present to all of the different colleges to get to know department heads and associate research deans and to be seen as a resource for people who were maybe encountering challenges that they didn’t know how to navigate or just to provide guidance so that they didn’t need me, that they weren’t coming to me with concerns or problems. So I think there’s that element of it. And sometimes that’s overlooked because it’s the more complicated element is handling research misconduct cases.

And so that’s a lot of what people think about when they think about a research integrity officer, and I think sometimes that gets a spotlight a little bit more. But if those preventative efforts fail or if there are just reasons why somebody would have maybe committed research misconduct, and usually it’s not some clear-cut case or reason, there’s a lot of nuance there, then it would come to me as a research misconduct allegation, and I think my role is to kind of sift through the nuance, right?

So I’m taking policy and I’m applying it to the concern at issue, and I’m making sure that, first, research misconduct makes sense that this would be the policy that relates to and would be best suited to address this issue or concern. And a lot of RIOs know that normally it is a concern coupled with many others, so there’s a little bit of triage in there and figuring out, “Okay, well, maybe this component is specific to my role and my charge, but I need to work and coordinate with other offices. So sifting through that nuance, triaging concerns, and then applying the policy to the concern, and making sure that we follow our process and our procedures.

I think sometimes there’s a misconception that RIOs are the ones who decide, or RIOs are the ones who are doing the investigation, but really, we’re relying on our subject matter experts and our scientific experts for helping us with the process, but we’re making sure that the process is carried out in the way that it’s set forth in our policies. And we’re also not the deciders, right? That would be our deciding officials. So yeah, I see myself as a steward of a process and a policy because if you have an integrity complaint, I think one of the biggest issues would be not carrying out your process with integrity to address that complaint. And so really just making sure that you’re thorough in your review. So that’s how I see my role as RIO.

Alexa McClellan: Yeah, I know, that’s so enlightening for people who might not have a lot of previous experience or introduction into this role. So I always find it fascinating how people end up in these research compliance or research oversight positions.

Myself, I was an English major in college, and I fell into research compliance through getting a graduate assistantship in the institutional review board office.,And then from there I just kind of got sucked in and stayed. So I’d love to hear more about how you found yourself in this position and what your path was to get you here.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, you and me both. I think it’s so interesting how people get to these roles. Nobody majors in it, right?

So my background is actually, I was a French major, so…

Alexa McClellan: Oh, humanities, right?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: And then I ended up teaching special education and got my master’s in that, I did Teach for America, and I knew that I didn’t necessarily want to be a teacher, so much respect for teachers, but not a great fit for me. And so I thought I’d want to get my doctorate and work in higher education in some capacity, had some interest in working with adult learners, maybe advising them wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do. And shortly before starting my doctoral program, I actually, I had my son. So he was eight weeks old when I started, and I decided to end up dropping to part-time and working full-time.

Alexa McClellan: Yes, child care is expensive.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Because I already had my master’s I was qualified to be an academic advisor, and so I was advising while I was getting my doctorate at night, and was really interested in the research side of things. Why did people take certain classes? Or how were adult learners being successful in school? And how could we better support them? And so I started to become really interested in human subjects research, which also makes sense, doctoral program, right?

And so as I started to submit to the IRB, other classmates would have questions, my advisor was referring people to me as somebody who could help navigate that process, and so when a position opened to be an IRB educator, one of my colleagues was like, “This actually sounds like a good fit for you. It’s something that you should consider,” and that’s how I dipped my toes into compliance.

And then from there, I think we all know that competence is rewarded with more work. And so just because of staffing changes and whatnot, I started helping to not only educate on IRB, but then also to audit. And then auditing has it sort of investigative type skill set, and so our RIO was really thoughtful about transition planning, and she knew she was going to retire, and I think she was looking for someone to be under her wing for a while to have that training so that when she left, we didn’t lose all that institutional knowledge, and there’s an assistant director role that I applied for and got, and then I was kind of under her for a little while and eventually transitioned fully into being RIO.

Alexa McClellan: I was really-

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: … you could cut any of that out.

Alexa McClellan: No, I love hearing that journey. I have a very similar track as well, so it’s so interesting to me how we end up where we are. Because no one… As little kid, it’s like, “When I grow up, I’m going to work in research administration or research compliance.”

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: And I truly do love it, and I think what we do is important and valuable, which probably lends to me liking it so much, but I also think that if more people were exposed to it, like how you had that opportunity during an assistantship that maybe more grads would be interested. We actually had a grant at Penn State with Ohio State. There were collaborators and we had students, GAs, and both of them after so that it impacted how they were thinking about their career trajectory, so I almost wish we had more exposure for grad students-

Alexa McClellan: Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: … to see what it’s like.

Alexa McClellan: So let’s talk a bit about the day-to-day side of things. Can you explain what a typical day looks like for you in the RIO’s office?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: The easy answer is there’s no typical day, right? Because every case is so different and you really just don’t know when you’re going to receive a new allegation or a new concern. But every day, I make sure to have a check-in with my team, we go through where we are for all of our active cases, and we do normally have quite a few cases going on at the same time, and they’re all in different phases, we have a shared inbox so we’re checking in to see what was going on in terms of inbox activity and if there’s any new emails or anything that I need to reach out for. So we’re really well organized, it’s taken a couple of years, but we’re kind of like a well-oiled machine in that we have checklists that we go through for each case. And so we’re seeing what step we are on or what needs to occur next and where we are in that checklist.

And we do that every day. It’s not necessarily a long check-in. Some are longer than others. It just depends on what we have going on, but then that helps us set priorities for the day. And priorities are often deadline-driven or if it’s something that’s really sensitive if there’s something that needs more urgent action, which again, I think is why it’s helpful to check in so regularly just because if you get a really sensitive complaint that comes in that might supersede or take priority over what you thought you were going to be working on for the day.

But again, I also really like to focus on preventative efforts. So I do a lot of outreach. I did in just last year, like 25 presentations on my own. That’s not including any of our educators or anybody on our outreach team. I am working on resource development. I am updating websites. I am, most recently because of the final rule, looking at our policy and updating our policy and procedures related to that. I’m really fortunate to work with a great group, shout out to them, and we’re always looking for, “How can we do this better? What can we improve?” And so some of it’s case-related, and some of it’s just we saw this best practice and it’s something that we want to try and adopt so that we’re making it so that we’re a solid program.

And then, like I said, I wear other hats, so RIO’s like ⅓, ¼ of my role that I’m juggling other responsibilities as needed.

Alexa McClellan: That’s how it goes, right? There’s always something else to be working on. And that leads me to my next question. You mentioned that you proactively educate as well as reactively investigate. And I’m curious how you balance those two priorities.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: So I think that we’re lucky and unique at Penn State in that our education program is under me as the RIO, who also then oversees the research integrity program and quality-assured. So as we have research concerns related to human subjects research, that would be the QA side of things or fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, I can help to inform what direction our education needs to go in.

So if I’m looking for trends all of the time. Really love being able to make a data-driven decision. So what type of allegation are we getting? What population? Is it grad students? Is it postdocs? Is there a particular college or department? Where are we struggling? It’s pretty clear what the trends are from year to year. And so then you have more targeted outreach and education related to that. So I feel like it can kind of come full circle in that you’re noticing an issue, but you’re not always just reacting to it. You’re starting to become more proactive.

I think that it depends on the semester cycle a little because we can be really proactive on the front end with orientations. And as people are getting started, and as students and trainees are coming on board, I might not necessarily be seeing research misconduct allegations because they’re just getting stood up or they’re not as familiar with the lab. And then once they become more familiar with projects in the lab, maybe that’s when they start to observe some concerns or some issues, and they need some guidance on that.

So some of it’s cyclical, although I will say trend-wise, right before that winter break, started to call it the unburdening of souls. People don’t want to go into the new year with anything hanging over their heads. We get a lot of allegations then. From a semester standpoint, makes sense too because they kind of finished out projects, they have a semester under their belt, and so maybe feel more willing to come forward or they feel like they have enough evidence to come forward at that point. So that’s really common.

And then same thing in the summer, I think because maybe people have stepped away from their research or they’re not also juggling the demands of teaching, we’ll see more allegations at that time too. And so knowing that, I can plan my outreach around those maybe higher volume times for concerns.

Alexa McClellan: So briefly, what kind of cases or issues most commonly land on your desk though? You talked about of course, research misconduct, but what does that entail?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, so I would say, hands down, it’s actually collaborator issues that are the most common types of concerns that I see. That and maybe like authorship disputes, but yeah, that’s more broadly a collaborator dispute, a collaborator issue. So a lot of the outreach I’ve been doing lately, it’s been about dispelling myths around research integrity. And one of those myths, I think, at least from my observations, is that it’s about the science because more often it’s about the people conducting the science.

Yeah, it’s very social, behavioral. It’s a series of poor decisions. It’s people who disagree and just cannot get past it, can’t navigate difficult conversations. Maybe it’s not having the same communication style and/or there’s expectations from a graduate student perspective or even unrealistic expectations around what would be authorship or what would warrant authorship versus acknowledgement, etc.

So I’ve been trying to do a lot of proactive outreach in that regard because again, that’s not research misconduct. You’re allowed to have a scientific disagreement with someone, and it doesn’t mean that they’ve purposefully fabricated or falsified data, but in terms of actual research misconduct allegations, it would then be plagiarism. And people always think that those are the easier ones to navigate, but they’re not. I actually think they’re more difficult. And I think, again, it comes back to it being a people issue. It’s more personal. Plagiarism is the taking of somebody else’s work and presenting it as your own or their ideas.

So someone feels like someone stole from them, they took from them, it’s very different than this person made up data or manipulated it. That’s about the data. Plagiarism is more about the people involved. And there’s also sometimes less of a story that you can get from a manuscript than say a lab notebook and a data set where the data speak for themselves and you can really parse out what went wrong. Plagiarism can sometimes just be one person’s word versus the other, which also makes it a little trickier to navigate.

Ed Butch: I hope you’re enjoying this episode of On Research. If you’re interested in important and diverse topics, the latest trends in the ever-changing landscape of universities. Join me, Ed Butch, for CITI Program’s, original podcast On Campus. New episodes released monthly. Now back to On Research.

Alexa McClellan: So can you walk us through what happens when a concern about research misconduct is raised?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah. At least for how I would handle it. I’m sure every institution’s a little bit different, but I always request an intake meeting. Even if it’s anonymous, I’ll say we could just do a phone call. I don’t need to know name. I don’t need to see a face. But normally there’s more to the story than what can be submitted via email or an online form. And I would say 98% of the time people are willing to have those intake meetings with me. And I use that first to gather more information. I look at what was presented to me and try to figure out what questions I have or what evidence I would need to pursue it further or to do a thorough rigorous assessment. But I also use that as an opportunity to educate the person coming forward on what our process actually is. People think they’re going to make this complaint, and sometimes they think that they’re going to be maybe a little bit more evolved in adjudicating it, and it’s not for them to do the scientific review.

We’ll certainly take a review that they’ve done, but we’re going to hand that off to someone who’s impartial or sometimes they think it’s going to be expeditious, right? We’re going to take this complaint and immediately stop all research in their lab. And that’s not how it works either. And so just making sure that they’re really well-informed on what it looks like to be a respondent and the different phases of the process, and what information is actually shared with them, what is shared with the respondent, so I’m also really clear about that. I never promise anonymity. We could redact things, we could keep the complainant’s name out of it if there’s true concern for retaliation or power dynamics. But labs are small, scientific communities are small, and a lot of times people can still figure out who brought forward the complaints. So we talk about confidentiality versus anonymity. So part of that meeting is getting the information that I need, and the other part of the meeting is really making sure that someone clearly understands the process.

Alexa McClellan: I think that’s a great segue into this ethical gray area and the implications that I mentioned before, and you’ve already brought it up, that when you’re dealing with people, it so often can just get very tricky as far as those interactions go. So I’m curious how you navigate that tension between protecting whistleblowers and ensuring fairness for the accused.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, so not an easy answer. Again, I think part of it’s just being transparent about what our process is for both parties, so everybody understands exactly what to expect. I think that as somebody on the receiving end of a complaint, they do have a right to be able to defend their work or have enough information to be able to actually refute the allegation, and so to a degree that might include, right, indicating who the complainant is. Like I said, I don’t usually guarantee confidentiality.

But then also being really upfront with our respondents about policies related to protecting whistleblowers and also considerations for power dynamics, I normally, if I did have concerns, would work with ethics and compliance, graduate school, the college… So particularly in cases where it’s like a student or a trainee and their advisor or just somebody who’s more senior, I’m always working with other offices so that everyone’s aware that there are potential other issues or underlying concerns that might surface related to that.

And then never dismissing a concern. So if somebody brings something to me, I’m going to make sure that I refer to the appropriate office that it is being handled. I’m not going to make a call on my own that says like, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like that’s big of a deal,” and letting the other offices who are more expert in handling those things do so.

So it’s not a great answer. I wish I could wave a magic wand and we never had concerns for people who brought forward complaints. And I know that there’s differences between overt and covert retaliation. That’s actually something I also talk to our complainants about.

In my experience, I don’t want to jinx myself here, but I have not had complainants come back to me later saying that they had concerns that retaliation was happening. It doesn’t mean that that doesn’t, but I think that when a respondent knows that so many people are looking at them and they’re looking at these concerns that it would not behoove them to react in a retaliatory way.

Alexa McClellan: Yeah. Thank you for that. It seems like it could be a difficult situation to be in.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah. Actually, and related to that, I’ve had a couple of people ask more recently when I’ve been doing my presentations, “Well, what about somebody who tries to weaponize your process?”

And to that, I would say, “While I have an obligation to review every complaint and concern, if it’s not credible, it’s not going to pass muster and go through our entire process. Maybe we would go to an inquiry. But if it truly is a retaliatory claim and there is not research misconduct that has occurred, then that will come out through the process. And if it was made in bad faith, and then there are consequences for bringing forward bad faith allegations, and yeah, it’s unfortunate that somebody would even have to be subjected to maybe going through an inquiry, but knowing that they didn’t do anything wrong, we can stand behind the fact that we didn’t just dismiss it, that we took it seriously, and we still didn’t have a finding.

And conversely, someone might not like you and they still might have a credible claim. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s retaliation either. Could be that you’ve had scientific disagreements in the past, maybe you’re not the best of colleagues. But if they bring forward a credible complaint and there is evidence of research misconduct and you committed research misconduct, just because you didn’t have the best working relationship doesn’t mean that’s retaliation.

Alexa McClellan: So what do you do in a situation where the right thing to do isn’t very clear? How do you approach that?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: I ask a lot of people who are smarter than me. Seriously, I talk to other RIOs, anonymizing case details or giving hypotheticals. I talk to my associate vice president for research, Deborah Thurley. She’s incredibly supportive. Our general counsel also is really helpful in those situations, or a vice provost for faculty affairs if I think it’s more of a personnel or faculty affair type issue and not necessarily research misconduct, title IX, ethics and compliance. So yeah, I think it’s just pulling in people who are experienced in dealing with these kind of gray areas and also making sure to follow our process. I think as soon as you start making exceptions to the rule, that’s when you find that you have trouble. So following our process, getting the input of others and doing what is most reasonable and most fair.

Alexa McClellan: Yeah, that seems to call back to what you said earlier about how RIOs are not the deciders, that it’s really just shepherding people through this process, this checklist of things that has been proven to work and bringing in all these other voices to help clarify something when needed.

Yeah, exactly.

So are there any other great areas? What about when the definition of research misconduct may not be so clear? So some activity, perhaps an authorship dispute where you have differing opinions. Do you feel like you have pretty clear guidelines that help inform your decisions in that point?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, but I also think that that’s something that’s been like an evolution of time coming across different cases or different instances where I think guidelines or guidance could be helpful, and then creating those resources not just for me as like a checklist, but also to be more preventative and proactive. So coming up with an authorship agreement and what that should look like or the decision matrix for thinking through what actually warrants authorship, series of questions that people can ask to handle that. So I do think we’ve developed a lot of resources on that end.

The other types of issues I feel like sometimes speak to intent, and that is really gray because honest error and carelessness is not research misconduct, but recklessness is. And whoever thought of those two words, careless and reckless, and the need to be able to discern the difference between the two, it’s really challenging. Especially for our committees.

And so I think sometimes once I get through the assessment and I’m able to triage out what really is a scientific disagreement or a collaborator dispute or an authorship dispute, or maybe that would go to inquiry, but normally we’re sort of able to sift those things out before a full investigation would occur.

But once you get to that investigation phase, I think at that point it is pretty clear that there’s a concern with the data because we’ve already gone through a scientific level of review, we’ve already looked at some evidence, we still have some concerns. But it’s like, how did that come about? Was this purposeful or did somebody make a mistake? And that’s where that gray area comes in. And at that point, you’re trying to get into somebody’s psyche. Why did they do what they do? How much information do they have going into this? And I think that’s why interviews are required at the investigation phase because you need the fuller context, not just a data set at that point. But that can be a really difficult decision for committees to come to, and they’re often looking to the RIO for guidance on that.

Alexa McClellan: Yeah. Because to remind ourselves it’s not misconduct to make a mistake.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Exactly.

Alexa McClellan: It has to meet that intentionality threshold.

So let’s take a step back now and look at the bigger picture. In your view, how has the landscape of research integrity changed over the past few years?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: I think it’s become more public, right? With social media and PubPeer and all that, I think it’s become more politicized. People weaponizing it like I had mentioned before. There was articles about university leadership that had some allegations in a short period of time. They were pretty close together, the articles that were coming out around that. And I know that that concerned other university leadership or just made institutions really think about what processes and procedures do we have.

And from that perspective, I think the field has grown in that it is more organized and there are more clear processes and procedures and guidance. And there’s more conversation about the nuance and the gray space. And so there’s a strong community of RIOs, and we really do all collaborate closely. We try to support each other, and so I think the field has maybe become more professionalized out of necessity, but also because I think institutions have a vested interest in trying to be more proactive, trying to stay out of headlines, trying to really encourage responsible conduct of research, and to that end, I think there’s been a lot more regulation, right? So we’ve had research misconduct policy, but there’s a lot of other requirements now related to federal regulations that impact or put more of a spotlight on conducting work with integrity or what it means to not conduct work with integrity and the stakes that there are.

And I guess in that regard, there’s also been more, not just that allegations are more public, but I think there’s more public interest in what institutions are doing, and are we acting with integrity in science? And we saw people question science, right? And we know what that looks like to have public distrust. And so I think that’s also put us a little bit more under the microscope. And I think it’s a good thing because like I said, it ultimately has led to us really having strong policies and procedures and professionalization of the field.

Alexa McClellan: You said that it’s in an institution’s best interest to have a culture of compliance.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah.

Alexa McClellan: I think that’s so true. We see institutions wanting to stay out of the news. You don’t want to be the one with your name in the headline, but also it just promotes an environment of good work and good ethics. So I’m curious how you as a RIO design or implement training programs to help build that culture of ethics on campus among researchers.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, so like I said at the beginning, I really see a large portion of being a RIO as doing outreach and getting to know associate research teams, department heads, the graduate school. And so I see it as a top down and a bottom up approach, right? I want people to feel comfortable coming to me. I actually think that, to a degree, the more concerns that I see suggest the willingness of people to come forward if they have a concern, which is exactly what you want from a culture of integrity, right?

Alexa McClellan: Yeah.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Of course we want people to be able to navigate some disagreements, et cetera, on their own, but at least they’re saying something and trying to prevent more serious issues from occurring down the line. So really being available to people, and letting people know who I am, and making them feel safe to come forward with a concern, and that’s not training, that’s relationship building, really. And I think through relationship building, people take the training a little bit more seriously. They know who it’s coming from, they maybe have a better understanding of why it’s important, and I think that’s the key. You could tell anybody all day long, “You have to manage data well.”

Why?

So I think that any training effort is why does this matter? And there’s so many reasons. It matters to you as an individual researcher because I presume you’re doing research for the betterment of science, which means you want to be a good researcher and use good research practices, right? So your own professional growth and acting with integrity. But then there’s also, you don’t want to lose funding. There’s more practical aspects of it too. You don’t want to have a retraction. You want your program that you’re graduating from to have a good solid reputation. And that means together, as a community in your program, you want to promote good science. So yeah, there’s more altruistic reasons to be a good researcher like public trust and helping to move the needle forward in different areas of research. And then there’s, I guess more practical ones. But I think helping people to really think through the why is important.

And I also think it’s important to demonstrate how it happens, because it is pretty rare, at least in my experience. Maybe people will disagree that someone just sets out to get research misconduct out the gate. Like, “I just graduated and I’m always going to make up my data,” that’s not usually how that happens. It’s a series of really small poor decisions that might seem harmless, but they snowball or they allow you then to make a bigger or more harmful, poor decision in the future because you already got away with that smaller one.

And so then talking about what that snowball effect looks like and the types of decision making that I see like not managing data well or waiting until the last minute to do something or not keeping notes, and then it becomes a lot of covering up for one’s mistake. And that mistake might not have been intentional, but then the cover-up is because you realize, “Oh my gosh, I forgot to log all of these participants’ surveys,” or something like that.

So just showing how it evolves and how… Again, it’s a people problem. It’s pressures, it’s not being organized, it’s maybe not being trained enough, so a lot of my training’s like, “Sure, I could preach good data management,” but I think actually bringing it down to the individual’s decision-making, and how it directly impacts them, and why this is important help to get more buy-in.

Alexa McClellan: Yeah, for sure.

And I know that it can be a very competitive environment for a lot of early-career researchers out there who feel this need to get tenure to publish or perish. Of course, we’ve all heard that phrase before. So there’s a lot of pressure on those researchers to produce something that they can put on their resume, yeah.

So let’s zoom out even further and take a look at how your office interacts with the wider research ecosystem. And I’m curious how your office interacts with external bodies like funding agencies or journals during an investigation.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah, so I think that we are very collaborative and willing to ask questions, and I appreciate very much. I mentioned Candy Yackel was the previous RIO, and she passed that on to me. So my experience, when in doubt, ask. So with a federal agency like the Office of Research Integrity or NIH or NSF, if I’m not sure how to handle something, I’m going to ask. I want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing. Isn’t that what we’re preaching to researchers is that if you’re not sure you should ask someone or not make assumptions or make sure you’re following the best practices? So that’s what I try to do. And again, also working with other RIOs and our general counsel.

And I also am really proud of how collaborative we are across different research administration areas. The Office for Research Protections at Penn State that I’m under has all of the compliance areas, right? So that makes it easy for us to all collaborate because we all work together. We even actually have a shared office SOP on that.

“What do we do when there’s a research concern?”

The short end of it is just give it to Courtney, but we’ve at least thought through how to work together in that regard. But then we also have our Office of sponsored programs. And again, that’s relationship building, but anything under the senior vice president for research, I feel like those offices are pretty well coordinated and we all respect the work that each other does and are quick to reach out and defer to who really is the expert in a particular area.

Alexa McClellan: Yeah, I love that. That culture of collaboration is so important.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Yeah.

Alexa McClellan: So I’m curious, what trends or emerging issues in research integrity are you keeping an eye on? What’s coming down the pike that you’re concerned about or that you think is going to change how you operate?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: I don’t know if this is an emerging issue, but I think it’s an issue that maybe we’re more aware of, which is the emotional effect of being RIO, right? The impact of cases and how do you care for yourself and how do you manage others’ emotions. It is a really emotional process that can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. You can be on the receiving end of some angry people who feel like they’ve been wronged either because you didn’t have a finding of misconduct and the complainant feels that there should have been, or the respondent feels wrongly accused. I’ve heard RIOs start to talk about, “Well, what do we do to care for ourselves?” And I think that’s really important to make sure that we can be strong in our roles.

Another element I think is the remote aspect of being a RIO. So a lot of offices are hybrid or fully remote, and what does that look like for processes? We are a remote office at Penn State, and so we’ve given a lot of consideration to how to make sure to continue to be effective in what we’re doing even though we don’t have a physical presence. And in some way, we were fortunate in that we were well positioned to go remote because even though we had a physical location at our university park campus with many other campuses, and research is happening across the Commonwealth. So we were still doing things remotely because we couldn’t go to a campus every single time there was a concern or a complaint. I think that people are still sort of figuring out what that looks like, especially when it comes to data sequestration.

And I think another emerging issue, it’s not just for research integrity, it’s for research in general, is what do we do with all this data? I’ve had cases with 52 terabytes of data. How do you figure out what’s most relevant? How do you store it? How do you pay for that storage? It’s hundreds of dollars a month, so the cost of maintaining research data, especially when you think about the NIH data management sharing requirements, and I think institutions really need to consider what infrastructure is necessary to manage big data. And I think that’s going to pose some challenges.

Alexa McClellan: Yeah, that’s fascinating.

So as we near the end, I want to give you a chance to address something that you mentioned earlier that many might misunderstand about your role. And you said earlier, one of the misconceptions is that you are the decider. Are there any other misconceptions that you’d like to correct about the role of a RIO?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Maybe not a misconception, but maybe a word of encouragement for future RIOs. Like I’ve said before, a lot of times it’s not necessarily about the science, it’s about the people.

When I first started as a RIO, we were talking about our backgrounds and how we came into, and I shared my story. Another RIO said to me, “How are you qualified to do your job? You don’t have a degree in STEM. You were never a bench scientist.”

And I thought, “I don’t know. I guess I’m not qualified.” It was a panicked moment.

And somebody else at the table said, “Most of the issues that we see in science are social-behavioral. It’s the decision making, it’s the interactions with other people. And as the RIO, those are the types of skills that you need to have, those soft skills.” And so again, we all come to this from different backgrounds.

I don’t think that people should feel like they don’t have the skill set necessarily if they hadn’t previously done bench science. And I also think that it’s important for RIOs to remember, even if you do have particular scientific expertise, if we were to have an allegation in education, that’s something that I would be able to address or maybe some other types of social behavioral research. But you’re not an expert in everything. And if you’re not actively in the field, you lose that.

And so while I’m not going to discredit or say it’s not important to have that, it’s great if you have that skillset. But if you don’t, just remember what your actual role is. And you are not the scientific investigator, I know that RIOs can’t act in that role. Again, and maybe it would be appropriate depending on the case, but certainly not for every case that you get. So instead, your role is to make sure that you follow your process, and to make sure that you’re working with the right people who have the expertise that’s necessary. So yeah, I think don’t just credit the experience that you have.

Alexa McClellan: For sure.

So finally, for listeners who might be inspired by this conversation, who might be considering working in research integrity themselves, do you have any parting words of advice for them?

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: I said and I mean in stand by that RIOs are really open. We want people to know what we do. We want people to be good scientists. And if you have an interest in learning more about it, I think ask a RIO. Reach out. And we can never give you specifics about cases, but we could talk a little bit more about what a day in the life looks like. And we can also talk about the difference between, say, compliance and misconduct because they are different. A lot of the same skill sets, but different lens. So I think if someone’s interested, reach out, talk to people, learn a little bit more about it.

Alexa McClellan: Courtney, thank you so much for your time. It has been such a joy talking to you. Really enjoyed hearing more about what it’s like being a RIO working in the trenches and the kind of things that you have to consider every day in the work that you do.

Dr. Courtney Karmelita: Thank you again for having me. It’s been nice to chat.

Alexa McClellan: And that’s it for today’s episode of On Research. A huge thank you to Dr. Courtney Karmelita for giving us a rare look into the work of protecting research integrity behind the scenes. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with the colleague, and stay tuned for more conversations that celebrate scientific research and the people who keep research ethical, responsible, and impactful.

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Thanks for listening.