Medical How should I handle institutional action in my application?

[Goro]

Hello. So in my junior semester, I was in a lab and accused of academic dishonesty on a lab notebook. It was a group project, and one of my previous partners dropped the class. We performed two rounds of the experiment, so her name was on the original data, but not in the later data. My other partner and I agreed to make one person accountable for all of the pictures (regrettable in hindsight). Regardless, I printed out the pictures without looking over them and there were some of the older pictures in the set with the partner that dropped. I spoke with my professor and let him know that it was a misunderstanding and even tried to corrects the situation by redoing the lab notebook, but he did not accept it. He eventually filed for falsification and fabrication of images in a lab and gave me a zero on the assignment. Essentially, no disciplinary action was taken, but academic action was (I received a zero on that assignment, but still passed the class). This is not on my transcript, so I reached out to my advisor for help, but she has not responded. How would I go about explaining this in my AMCAS application?

You tell the truth and take responsibility for your lack of oversight.

In academia, if your grad student fakes data, you as the PI still take the fall.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

State the truth and have a well thought out explanation for your interview.

 

[Goro]

This was a research class that can also double as research. I presented a poster as well. Should I still include this in my work and activities?

I'm against using classes as actual research, but that's just me.

 

[tantacles]

While I would typically agree with you. My school formed the course-based undergraduate research experience classes to accommodate the excessive amount of students wanting to do research. The classes still function as actual research with the same number of hours and work put into them, but credit is also received. If I were to include this research in my work and activities (addressing that institutional action was taken, but still adding what I learned) would this hurt me more than help me?

I think rather than going with your own opinion, it might be wiser to go with the opinion of an expert given you presumably posted here to get insight of experts.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

If you don’t have any other research on your CV, maybe it’s better to put the poster than nothing. But if you have actual “real” research I would omit your course research.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[tantacles]

Would this be a good way to explain it in my app?
"During the first semester of junior year, I committed falsification in a notebook. This was done by inaccurately checking the images given to me by my groupmate before pasting them in my notebook. To give some pretense, the lab Fermentation Ecology was a lab I enrolled in to study the microbial communities within Kombucha. In groups of three, we performed two rounds of experiments. To divide the amount of work, we agreed to assign a job to each groupmate. One job of taking pictures of the beakers was given to another groupmate. The first round of experiments performed had all three of our names, but the second only had two of our names due to one of my groupmates withdrawing from the course. When it came time to the paste images in the notebook, my other groupmate sent me a document with all the images. When pasting them, I carelessly pasted them into my notebook without checking and committed falsification of images. While this experience is undoubtedly unsatisfactory in the field of medicine, it was a learning experience. I learned to firstly stay up to date with all of my research and secondly to always check in on groupmates to make sure every detail is checked before proceeding."
Thanks

In my opinion, this is far too long. I can not rewrite the whole thing for you. What I would suggest is that you take this approach:

1. State what the violation was clearly and succinctly
2. State that you are sorry that this happened, and that you realize you made a mistake
3. State how you learned how to prevent this in the future.

This should not take more than 3-4 sentences.

 

[TheBoneDoctah]

Agree. Kombucha needs to go.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile