Cases of misconduct in science, ranging from unearned authorship to falsifying data, seem to crop up with surprising regularity. Every effort needs to be made to ensure that fledgling researchers understand what is — and isn't — acceptable. For postdocs, such training is especially important because they are at a point in their career at which they are still being mentored but are also responsible for mentoring others.

In particular, as the US National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) notes, postdocs often have no formal standing at their institution, which means they may have to rely on their overworked — or perhaps sometimes unreliable or even untrustworthy — mentor to address issues such as who should be first author on a paper, how or when collaborations should take place, and what happens to the postdoc's data when he or she leaves the lab. These are potentially awkward topics to broach, and many postdocs avoid them, allowing the daily research tasks to take precedence. But they are also issues in which research integrity could become compromised.

To address the problem, the NPA launched a programme to increase awareness and promote training in the responsible conduct of research. Last month it announced the first round of seed grants in the programme. Twelve universities and postdoc associations each received $1,000 to help them with initiatives centred on research integrity. The Massachusetts General Hospital Postdoctoral Association in Boston, for example, will use its money to support a series of lunch discussions between mentors and postdocs. At the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, the grant is helping to catalyse conferences on various topics related to 'responsible conduct'.

There is always the danger that such discussions will do little more than pay lip service to the issues and offer little additional practical advice. But even in this worst case, they will achieve something highly important — they will get people talking about these problematic areas. And that could be invaluable, because if this ice isn't broken, issues such as determining authorship or setting up a collaboration could become as complex and challenging as the science itself.