Language Institute presents
Dr. Luke Plonsky
Professor, Applied Linguistics
Northern Arizona University
About the speaker
Luke Plonsky (PhD, Michigan State) is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. His scholarly work, addressing substantive and methodological topics ranging from the effects of language learning apps and individual differences to sampling, ethics, open science, measurement, and meta-analytic methods, has appeared in over 100 articles, book chapters, and books. Luke serves as Editor of Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Managing Editor of Foreign Language Annals, and Founding Editor of Applied Linguistics Press. In addition to an Honorary Professorship at University of St. Andrews (Scotland), Luke has held faculty appointments at Georgetown University and University College London, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Spain in 2021.
A brownbag for UW-Madison researchers
AI and Questionable Research Practices: Ethical Considerations for Authors, Journal Editors, and Reviewers
11:30 am-12:30 pm
Thursday, November 6
1418 Van Hise Hall
An invited SLA lecture
What Do You Mean by ‘Questionable’? The Ethics of Study Quality in Applied Linguistics
3:00-4:00 pm
Thursday, November 6
1418 Van Hise Hall
About the brownbag
Generative AI is an ethical minefield for academics. We might not question a researcher who asks ChatGPT, for example, to summarize an article or to help them generate an outline. But what about asking AI to analyze our data (Aryadoust, 2024) or to distill our manuscript into a submission-ready abstract (Botes et al., forthcoming)? Similarly, journal reviewers might turn to AI-based tools for help with the high effort, low reward task facing them. (I have personally seen this multiple times.) Recognizing that (a) AI is here to stay and that (b) we want to avoid a future where studies are written, reviewed, and decided upon almost entirely by bots, we need to figure this out. To date, however, very limited guidance is available from learned societies, journals, or publishers on whether, when, and how it might be acceptable to employ GenAI in our scholarly work. Spoiler alert: I don’t have the answers. What I will provide in this session, though, is a set of considerations and proposals within the frameworks of study quality (Plonsky, 2024) and ‘questionable research practices’ (QRPs) (Larsson et al., 2024) to help guide our decision-making as authors as well as in other roles we carry out including, namely, co-authors/collaborators, mentors, journal editors, and reviewers. I will also introduce (and solicit feedback on) a nascent-stage study my collaborators and I are carrying out to catalog the breadth of AI-specific QRPs (Yaw et al., in preparation).
Sponsors: The Language Institute, Second Language Acquisition PhD Program, Language Sciences, and Data Science Institute
Contact: Dianna Murphy
About the lecture
It wasn’t until fairly recently that we as a field began to reflect on and systematically examine the quality of our research (Gass et al., 2021). This work has led to real progress on fronts ranging from sampling and design to data analysis, researcher training, open science, and replication (e.g., McManus, 2024; Plonsky, 2024; Sudina, 2023). Another focus of this meta-science movement has involved an expanded view of research ethics (De Costa, 2016; Yaw et al., 2023). In this talk, I first propose a framework for defining the notion of ‘study quality’ that includes a broad understanding of the many micro-ethical considerations found throughout the research process (i.e., Kubanyiova, 2008). I will focus in particular on the notion of ‘questionable research practices’ (QRPs) both conceptually and as found in recent studies in applied linguistics and beyond (Fanelli, 2009; Larsson et al., 2023). QRPs are decisions that may be considered more or less ethical depending on contextual factors (e.g., researcher intent, resources available). This ambiguity presents a challenge for those who train novice researchers, highlighting the need for conversations about how we approach decision-making in our research process and how we navigate the ethical dimensions of these decisions. In addition to presenting results on the frequency and perceived severity of QRPs in applied linguistics, I will suggest a number of ways that we can improve the quality of our efforts and thereby also accelerate knowledge generation in the language sciences.
Sponsors: Lectures Committee; Second Language Acquisition PhD Program with the Language Institute; Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+; Department of English; German Program; Department of Spanish and Portuguese 
Contact: Jana Martin
The UW-Madison Language Institute is committed to inclusive and accessible programming. To request an accommodation for this event, please contact Language Institute associate director Jana Martin three business days in advance.