In Honors FYEX, I learned different ways to start my journey on becoming a research scholar. For one class session, I was asked to look over two correlating articles and explain the meaning of information literacy and synthesis based on the articles and information from the library’s database on the subject. By doing this in class while at the library with a professor from the reference desk, I was able to gain a lot of knowledge on what resources I could use on campus to do research. I learned about databases such as MavScholar and using the call number system to find hard-copies of textbooks and journal articles. Through analysis of these articles in class and my past dealings with research I was able to describe what information literacy and synthesis meant to me. I define it as a series of steps to develop critical thinking skills to synthesize new information for a topic and continue to practice these tools throughout one’s education. This shows integrity, work ethic, and the ability to solve complex problems on one’s own, of which are a great combination for in a future career. To me now, research information literacy and synthesis is being able to develop a research topic, finding credible resources to synthesize topics and ideas from through knowledge of external resources, and be able to critique one’s own work and others in the field. My research synthesis essay reflects this definition in my four-step way to start a research project.
Another part of the class was to exemplify what having a code of ethics meant to us. Every doctor takes a pledge to help patients to the best of his/her ability, a lawyer to always seek justice, and psychologists pledge to keep patient confidentiality, all of these and others are examples of a code of ethics. Even when writing a simple research paper in high school or when just starting college, students must pledge as well, an ethic code of sorts that they are not going to plagiarize their work. Today, students have the vast knowledge of the internet, access to millions of historical articles, scholarly journals, databases, etc. Then there is the inadequate and incorrect information waiting to pounce on an overly exhausted teen, whose paper is due at 8:00 A.M., and its midnight with two words written on the page. It’s at times like these students really need to understand the importance of plagiarism and a research code of ethics. Many describe it as, “Giving credit where credit is due”.
I described a big example where I have seen unethical research is when doing experiments in a laboratory in high school, and probably in college labs as well. Students compare their results with another team to find out they have completely different answers! The students consult the teacher to find their results have been contaminated, and so they change their numbers to better reflect the experiment by copying others answers or finding the answers online. In a high school laboratory setting, it’s just a difference of a grade, in real life, it could mean life or death in new pharmaceutical studies in the medical field. Students need to understand that falsifying results or copy and pasting an article into a paper of their own is unethical. The point of research is to gain knowledge and understanding through questioning and problem solving using one’s own brain, to use evidence to back up the findings of the experiment/research project and sharing the research within the existing community of researchers in the field.
By beginning to understand how to start the research process helped me immensely in my undergraduate career as I have now done numerous research projects. It amuses me now when teachers ask for a minimum number of sources cited, because I usually have over twenty already listed as I love to fact check and “dig deep” when solving a problem, I don’t understand. One of my past teachers described me as a “problem-solver” that I had a vast amount of knowledge and liked to share with the class, and if I didn’t know an answer, I would dig and dig and dig until I found it. This describes the type of attitude I want to bring to the table on a research team. I love discovering new information and seeing the whole puzzle come together at the end, even if it is not world changing. I hope to continue doing research even after I have left MSU in the dental field someday.