From February 23 to March 17, the ION Mini-Course on “Scientific Communication, Integrity and Innovation” was held in the SIBS main lecture hall by Prof. Mu-ming Poo (ION). The five lectures of this series were entitled “Scientific presentation: oral report & scientific writing”, “Scientific misconducts: fabrication, falsification & plagiarism”, “Scientific ethics: gray-zone problems”, “Learning research innovation” and “Scientific path-finding: personal retrospectives”.

　　The lectures were open to all interested, and advanced students preparing manuscripts for publication were strongly encouraged to attend. More than 200 researchers attended the classes, mostly students from ION and including some were from other SIBS institutes.

　　After lectures 2, 3 and 4, 100 students and postdoctoral fellows from different institutes were divided into 5 small groups for case discussions. The purpose of the case discussion is to stimulate the students to think about scientific misconduct and integrity, and reach a general consensus within the group. Ten ION faculty members served as instructors of small group discussions and reported the opinions of their groups to all the course attendees during the panel discussion sessions.

　　Due the enthusiastic responses from the attendees, this course will be offered as a regular course on a biennial basis, and required for ION students before their Ph.D thesis defense.