Last month the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued a powerfully worded statement Towards Excellence in Science (go.nature.com/pnhi9k). In encouraging a scientific culture of challenging the status quo, it includes a passage that speaks to laboratory behaviour: “To achieve scientific excellence, the scientific community needs to consciously advocate and uphold the scientific spirit, promote the value and focus of science in seeking truth and innovation, establish management structures and mechanisms that suit the characteristics and rules of scientific research, and discourage scientific behaviour aimed only at short-term success or individual benefits.”

This week, the Irish Universities Association has issued a Concordat on research integrity, which includes mention of two aspects (among several) of scientific behaviour needing support: “reliability in performing research (meticulous, careful and attentive to detail), and in communication of the results (fair and full and unbiased reporting), and objectivity: interpretations and conclusions must be founded on facts and data capable of proof and secondary review; there should be transparency in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, and verifiability of the scientific reasoning.”

Such statements could all too easily be ignored unless they have teeth. In that spirit, readers might do well to focus on a clause in a document produced by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), the country’s main funding agency and a collaborator on the integrity Concordat. On page 32 of its strategic plan, Agenda 2020, is the statement that research integrity will be scrutinized by external audits (go.nature.com/xjudiz). Congratulations to the SFI for showing more determination than most to back words with actions.

Excellent science requires, not least, a capacity for researchers to be ruthlessly self-critical — in other words, assuring technical integrity. On discovering something interesting, they need to assume at the outset that they are deluded — that the combination of their object of study and their experimental, or theoretical or simulation set-up is conspiring to make them mistakenly believe that they have a startling new insight to offer an admiring world. They need to show their analyses or data to trusted but critically minded colleagues, in order to avoid mistakes and cherry-picking. Such a culture is best bred by tough but supportive laboratory mentors. In its annual mentoring awards, which has been held since 2005, Nature has rewarded outstanding mentors in many countries and regions.

Given Ireland’s evident determination to sustain best practices, it is timely that this year’s mentoring competition is for scientists resident in that country and in Northern Ireland. Candidates need to be nominated by past mentees using forms available at go.nature.com/hmezau. Deadline: 4 August.