This is a list of short summaries of advisory opinions. The list also includes decisions. In these cases, LOWI has declared the petition inadmissible. It has therefore not examined the substance of the petition and has not issued an advisory opinion.
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The full text of the advisory opinion is only available in Dutch. If you want to read the full text in English, you can use the Dutch text for translation purposes.
- Advisory opinion 2023-01Complaint about a doctor. The case concerns a discussion paper in a scientific journal about the then prevailing Covid-19 policy. The doctor was not appointed for scientific research, only for patient care. However, this was not clear to the reader of the discussion paper. Therefore the complaint was nevertheless declared admissible.
- Advisory opinion 2022-19Conflict between an external PhD-student and an associate professor. There is an unequal position, because the associate professor is in hierarchy above the external Phd-student. The conflict is about authorship and the order of authors.
- Advisory opinion 2022-18Petitioner is an association that engages in a public debate and strives for a legislative change. More often complaints procedures are being used for the sake of a public debate. LOWI wonders whether CWI’s and LOWI are the designated organizations to handle these kind of complaints.
- Advisory opinion 2022-17Complaint about a working paper. LOWI assesses various parts of the complaint which, according to Petitioners, have wrongfully not been assessed by the CWI. In the end, LOWI has the impression that this case is mainly about political controversy. CWI's and LOWI are not meant for this.
- Advisory opinion 2022-16Professor complains that in violation of norm 52 a former colleague is chief-editor of a ‘predatory journal’. The LOWI rules that the arguments presented mainly question the good intentions and the actions of the journal, but don’t question the position of the defendant that he has nothing to do with the journal.
- Advisory opinion 2022-15Manuscript of a dissertation does not meet the requirements of scientific integrity because there is (a lot of) plagiarism. In the Humanities this is considered a serious matter, even if in this case it does not concern plagiarism of ideas. LOWI expresses its concerns about the way the promoter has fulfilled his role.
- Advisory opinion 2022-14Unfounded complaint. If a scientist gets involved in the public and scientific debate, it should not be too quickly stated by invoking the code of conduct that scientific integrity has been violated. It is not the intention of the code of conduct that scientists should hold back from meddling in the public debate.
- Advisory opinion 2022-13Breeders complain about commission research. CWI and LOWI judge that animal scientists have not violated any standards from the code of conduct. Whether there are methodological errors or 'bad science' are points of substantive discussion that belong in the scientific debate. Not in a complaints procedure where scientific integrity is concerned.
- Advisory opinion 2022-12Petitioner has violated the code of conduct by violating the principle of due care. In the amended research proposal, Petitioner relied heavily on the Interested Party's previous research proposals and ideas. Petitioner should not have done so in this way. In view of Petitioner's position and experience, this qualifies as questionable behaviour.
- Advisory opinion 2022-11Spoiled PhD trajectory. Former PhD student has violated scientific integrity and exhibited questionable behavior with regard to, among other things, co-authorship. LOWI advises to provide feedback to the CWI that an accused scientist must in future be heard orally.