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Scientific misconduct

Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in the publication of professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions,[1] reproduced in The COPE report 1999:[2]

  • Danish definition: "Intention or gross negligence leading to fabrication of the scientific message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist"
  • Swedish definition: "Intention[al] distortion of the research process by fabrication of data, text, hypothesis, or methods from another researcher's manuscript form or publication; or distortion of the research process in other ways."

The consequences of scientific misconduct can be damaging for perpetrators and journal audience[3][4] and for any individual who exposes it.[5] In addition there are public health implications attached to the promotion of medical or other interventions based on false or fabricated research findings.

Three percent of the 3,475 research institutions that report to the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity, indicate some form of scientific misconduct.[6] However the ORI will only investigate allegations of impropriety where research was funded by federal grants. They routinely monitor such research publications for red flags and their investigation is subject to a statute of limitations. Other private organizations like the Committee of Medical Journal Editors (COJE) can only police their own members.[7]

The validity of the methods and results of scientific papers are often scrutinized in journal clubs. In this venue, members can decide amongst themselves with the help of peers if a scientific paper's ethical standards are met.

Motivation

According to David Goodstein of Caltech, there are motivators for scientists to commit misconduct, which are briefly summarised here.[8]

Career pressure
Science is still a very strongly career-driven discipline. Scientists depend on a good reputation to receive ongoing support and funding, and a good reputation relies largely on the publication of high-profile scientific papers. Hence, there is a strong imperative to "publish or perish". Clearly, this may motivate desperate (or fame-hungry) scientists to fabricate results.
Ease of fabrication
In many scientific fields, results are often difficult to reproduce accurately, being obscured by noise, artifacts, and other extraneous data. That means that even if a scientist does falsify data, they can expect to get away with it – or at least claim innocence if their results conflict with others in the same field. There are few strongly backed systems to investigate possible violations, attempt to press charges, or punish deliberate misconduct. It is relatively easy to cheat although difficult to know exactly how many scientists fabricate data.[9]
Monetary Gain
In many scientific fields, the most lucrative options for professionals are often selling opinions. Corporations can pay experts to support products directly or indirectly via conferences. Psychologists can make money by repeatedly acting as an expert witness in custody proceedings for the same law firms.

Forms

The U.S. National Science Foundation defines three types of research misconduct: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.[10][11]

  • Fabrication is making up results and recording or reporting them. This is sometimes referred to as "drylabbing".[12] A more minor form of fabrication is where references are included to give arguments the appearance of widespread acceptance, but are actually fake, or do not support the argument.[13]
  • Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
  • Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. One form is the appropriation of the ideas and results of others, and publishing as to make it appear the author had performed all the work under which the data was obtained. A subset is citation plagiarism – willful or negligent failure to appropriately credit other or prior discoverers, so as to give an improper impression of priority. This is also known as, "citation amnesia", the "disregard syndrome" and "bibliographic negligence".[14] Arguably, this is the most common type of scientific misconduct. Sometimes it is difficult to guess whether authors intentionally ignored a highly relevant cite or lacked knowledge of the prior work. Discovery credit can also be inadvertently reassigned from the original discoverer to a better-known researcher. This is a special case of the Matthew effect.[15]
    • Plagiarism-fabrication – the act of taking an unrelated figure from an unrelated publication and reproducing it exactly in a new publication, claiming that it represents new data.
    • Self-plagiarism – or multiple publication of the same content with different titles or in different journals is sometimes also considered misconduct; scientific journals explicitly ask authors not to do this. It is referred to as "salami" (i.e. many identical slices) in the jargon of medical journal editors. According to some editors this includes publishing the same article in a different language.[16]

Other types of research misconduct are also recognized:

  • Ghostwriting – the phenomenon where someone other than the named author(s) makes a major contribution. Typically, this is done to mask contributions from authors with a conflict of interest.
  • Conversely, research misconduct is not limited to not listing authorship,[citation needed] but also includes the act of conferring authorship on those that have not made substantial contributions to the research.[17][18] This is done by senior researchers who muscle their way onto the papers of inexperienced junior researchers[19] as well as others that stack authorship in an effort to guarantee publication. This is much harder to prove due to a lack of consistency in defining "authorship" or "substantial contribution".[20][21][22]
  • Scientific misconduct can also occur during the peer-review process by a reviewer or editor with a conflict of interest. Reviewer-coerced citation can also inflate the perceived citation impact of a researcher's work and their reputation in the scientific community,[23] similar to excessive self-citation. Reviewers are expected to be impartial and assess the quality of their work. They are expected to declare a conflict of interest to the editors if they are colleagues or competitors of the authors. A rarer case of scientific misconduct is editorial misconduct,[24] where an editor does not declare conflicts of interest, creates pseudonyms to review papers, gives strongly worded editorial decisions to support reviews suggesting to add excessive citations to their own unrelated works or to add themselves as a co-author or their name to the title of the manuscript.
  • Publishing in a predatory journal, knowingly or unknowingly, may be considered a form of scientific misconduct.[25][26]

Photo manipulation

Compared to other forms of scientific misconduct, image fraud (manipulation of images to distort their meaning) is of particular interest since it can frequently be detected by external parties. In 2006, the Journal of Cell Biology gained publicity for instituting tests to detect photo manipulation in papers that were being considered for publication.[27] This was in response to the increased usage of programs such as Adobe Photoshop by scientists, which facilitate photo manipulation. Since then more publishers, including the Nature Publishing Group, have instituted similar tests and require authors to minimize and specify the extent of photo manipulation when a manuscript is submitted for publication. However, there is little evidence to indicate that such tests are applied rigorously. One Nature paper published in 2009[28] has subsequently been reported to contain around 20 separate instances[29] of image fraud.

Although the type of manipulation that is allowed can depend greatly on the type of experiment that is presented and also differ from one journal to another, in general the following manipulations are not allowed:[citation needed]

  • splicing together different images to represent a single experiment
  • changing brightness and contrast of only a part of the image
  • any change that conceals information, even when it is considered to be aspecific, which includes:
    • changing brightness and contrast to leave only the most intense signal
    • using clone tools to hide information
  • showing only a very small part of the photograph so that additional information is not visible

Image manipulations are typically done on visually repetitive images such as those of blots and microscope images.[30]

Helicopter research

Neo-colonial research or neo-colonial science,[31][32] frequently described as helicopter research,[31] parachute science[33][34] or research,[35] parasitic research,[36][37] or safari study,[38] is when researchers from wealthier countries go to a developing country, collect information, travel back to their country, analyze the data and samples, and publish the results with no or little involvement of local researchers. A 2003 study by the Hungarian academy of sciences found that 70% of articles in a random sample of publications about least-developed countries did not include a local research co-author.[32]

Frequently, during this kind of research, the local colleagues might be used to provide logistics support as fixers but are not engaged for their expertise or given credit for their participation in the research. Scientific publications resulting from parachute science frequently only contribute to the career of the scientists from rich countries, thus limiting the development of local science capacity (such as funded research centers) and the careers of local scientists.[31] This form of "colonial" science has reverberations of 19th century scientific practices of treating non-Western participants as "others" in order to advance colonialism—and critics call for the end of these extractivist practices in order to decolonize knowledge.[39][40]

This kind of research approach reduces the quality of research because international researchers may not ask the right questions or draw connections to local issues.[41] The result of this approach is that local communities are unable to leverage the research to their own advantage.[34] Ultimately, especially for fields dealing with global issues like conservation biology which rely on local communities to implement solutions, neo-colonial science prevents institutionalization of the findings in local communities in order to address issues being studied by scientists.[34][39]

Responsibilities

Authorship responsibility

All authors of a scientific publication are expected to have made reasonable attempts to check findings submitted to academic journals for publication.

Simultaneous submission of scientific findings to more than one journal or duplicate publication of findings is usually regarded as misconduct, under what is known as the Ingelfinger rule, named after the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine 1967–1977, Franz Ingelfinger.[42]

Guest authorship (where there is stated authorship in the absence of involvement, also known as gift authorship) and ghost authorship (where the real author is not listed as an author) are commonly regarded as forms of research misconduct. In some cases coauthors of faked research have been accused of inappropriate behavior or research misconduct for failing to verify reports authored by others or by a commercial sponsor. Examples include the case of Gerald Schatten who co-authored with Hwang Woo-Suk, the case of Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain named as guest author of papers fabricated by Malcolm Pearce,[43] (Chamberlain was exonerated from collusion in Pearce's deception)[44] – and the coauthors with Jan Hendrik Schön at Bell Laboratories. More recent cases include that of Charles Nemeroff,[45] then the editor-in-chief of Neuropsychopharmacology, and a well-documented case involving the drug Actonel.[46]

Authors are expected to keep all study data for later examination even after publication. The failure to keep data may be regarded as misconduct. Some scientific journals require that authors provide information to allow readers to determine whether the authors might have commercial or non-commercial conflicts of interest. Authors are also commonly required to provide information about ethical aspects of research, particularly where research involves human or animal participants or use of biological material. Provision of incorrect information to journals may be regarded as misconduct. Financial pressures on universities have encouraged this type of misconduct. The majority of recent cases of alleged misconduct involving undisclosed conflicts of interest or failure of the authors to have seen scientific data involve collaborative research between scientists and biotechnology companies.[45][47]

Research institution responsibility

In general, defining whether an individual is guilty of misconduct requires a detailed investigation by the individual's employing academic institution. Such investigations require detailed and rigorous processes and can be extremely costly. Furthermore, the more senior the individual under suspicion, the more likely it is that conflicts of interest will compromise the investigation. In many countries (with the notable exception of the United States) acquisition of funds on the basis of fraudulent data is not a legal offence and there is consequently no regulator to oversee investigations into alleged research misconduct. Universities therefore have few incentives to investigate allegations in a robust manner, or act on the findings of such investigations if they vindicate the allegation.

Well publicised cases illustrate the potential role that senior academics in research institutions play in concealing scientific misconduct. A King's College (London) internal investigation showed research findings from one of their researchers to be 'at best unreliable, and in many cases spurious'[48] but the college took no action, such as retracting relevant published research or preventing further episodes from occurring. It was only 10 years later, when an entirely separate form of misconduct by the same individual was being investigated by the General Medical Council, that the internal report came to light.[citation needed]

In a more recent case[49] an internal investigation at the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune determined that there was evidence of misconduct by Dr. Gopal Kundu, but an external committee was then organised which dismissed the allegation, and the NCCS issued a memorandum exonerating the authors of all charges of misconduct. Undeterred by the NCCS exoneration, the relevant journal (Journal of Biological Chemistry) withdrew the paper based on its own analysis.

Scientific peer responsibility

Some academics believe that scientific colleagues who suspect scientific misconduct should consider taking informal action themselves, or reporting their concerns.[50] This question is of great importance since much research suggests that it is very difficult for people to act or come forward when they see unacceptable behavior, unless they have help from their organizations. A "User-friendly Guide," and the existence of a confidential organizational ombudsman may help people who are uncertain about what to do, or afraid of bad consequences for their speaking up.[51]

Responsibility of journals

Journals are responsible for safeguarding the research record and hence have a critical role in dealing with suspected misconduct. This is recognised by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) which has issued clear guidelines[52] on the form (e.g. retraction) that concerns over the research record should take.

  • The COPE guidelines state that journal editors should consider retracting a publication if they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error). Retraction is also appropriate in cases of redundant publication, plagiarism and unethical research.
  • Journal editors should consider issuing an expression of concern if they receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors, there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors' institution will not investigate the case, they believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive, or an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.
  • Journal editors should consider issuing a correction if a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error), or the author / contributor list is incorrect (i.e. a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included).

Evidence emerged in 2012 that journals learning of cases where there is strong evidence of possible misconduct, with issues potentially affecting a large portion of the findings, frequently fail to issue an expression of concern or correspond with the host institution so that an investigation can be undertaken. In one case the Journal of Clinical Oncology issued a Correction despite strong evidence that the original paper was invalid.[53][failed verification] In another case,[28] Nature allowed a Corrigendum to be published despite clear evidence of image fraud. Subsequent Retraction of the paper required the actions of an independent whistleblower.[54]

The cases of Joachim Boldt and Yoshitaka Fujii[55] in anaesthesiology focussed attention on the role that journals play in perpetuating scientific fraud as well as how they can deal with it. In the Boldt case, the Editors-in-Chief of 18 specialist journals (generally anaesthesia and intensive care) made a joint statement regarding 88 published clinical trials conducted without Ethics Committee approval. In the Fujii case, involving nearly 200 papers, the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia, which published 24 of Fujii's papers, has accepted that its handling of the issue was inadequate. Following publication of a Letter to the Editor from Kranke and colleagues in April 2000,[56] along with a non-specific response from Dr. Fujii, there was no follow-up on the allegation of data manipulation and no request for an institutional review of Dr. Fujii's research. Anesthesia & Analgesia went on to publish 11 additional manuscripts by Dr. Fujii following the 2000 allegations of research fraud, with Editor Steven Shafer stating[57] in March 2012 that subsequent submissions to the Journal by Dr. Fujii should not have been published without first vetting the allegations of fraud. In April 2012 Shafer led a group of editors to write a joint statement,[58] in the form of an ultimatum made available to the public, to a large number of academic institutions where Fujii had been employed, offering these institutions the chance to attest to the integrity of the bulk of the allegedly fraudulent papers.

Consequences of scientific misconduct

Consequences for science

The consequences of scientific fraud vary based on the severity of the fraud, the level of notice it receives, and how long it goes undetected. For cases of fabricated evidence, the consequences can be wide-ranging, with others working to confirm (or refute) the false finding, or with research agendas being distorted to address the fraudulent evidence. The Piltdown Man fraud is a case in point: The significance of the bona-fide fossils that were being found was muted for decades because they disagreed with Piltdown Man and the preconceived notions that those faked fossils supported. In addition, the prominent paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward spent time at Piltdown each year until he died, trying to find more Piltdown Man remains. The misdirection of resources kept others from taking the real fossils more seriously and delayed the reaching of a correct understanding of human evolution. (The Taung Child, which should have been the death knell for the view that the human brain evolved first, was instead treated very critically because of its disagreement with the Piltdown Man evidence.)

In the case of Prof Don Poldermans, the misconduct occurred in reports of trials of treatment to prevent death and myocardial infarction in patients undergoing operations.[59] The trial reports were relied upon to issue guidelines that applied for many years across North America and Europe.[60]

In the case of Dr Alfred Steinschneider, two decades and tens of millions of research dollars were lost trying to find the elusive link between infant sleep apnea, which Steinschneider said he had observed and recorded in his laboratory, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), of which he stated it was a precursor. The cover was blown in 1994, 22 years after Steinschneider's 1972 Pediatrics paper claiming such an association,[61] when Waneta Hoyt, the mother of the patients in the paper, was arrested, indicted and convicted on five counts of second-degree murder for the smothering deaths of her five children.[62] While that in itself was bad enough, the paper, presumably written as an attempt to save infants' lives, ironically was ultimately used as a defense by parents suspected in multiple deaths of their own children in cases of Münchausen syndrome by proxy. The 1972 Pediatrics paper was cited in 404 papers in the interim and is still listed on Pubmed without comment.[63]

Consequences for those who expose misconduct

The potentially severe consequences for individuals who are found to have engaged in misconduct also reflect on the institutions that host or employ them and also on the participants in any peer review process that has allowed the publication of questionable research. This means that a range of actors in any case may have a motivation to suppress any evidence or suggestion of misconduct. Persons who expose such cases, commonly called whistleblowers, find themselves open to retaliation by a number of different means.[43] These negative consequences for exposers of misconduct have driven the development of whistle blowers charters – designed to protect those who raise concerns.

Data issues

Exposure of fraudulent data

With the advancement of the internet, there are now several tools available to aid in the detection of plagiarism and multiple publication within biomedical literature. One tool developed in 2006 by researchers in Dr. Harold Garner's laboratory at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas is Déjà vu,[64] an open-access database containing several thousand instances of duplicate publication. All of the entries in the database were discovered through the use of text data mining algorithm eTBLAST, also created in Dr. Garner's laboratory. The creation of Déjà vu[65] and the subsequent classification of several hundred articles contained therein have ignited much discussion in the scientific community concerning issues such as ethical behavior, journal standards, and intellectual copyright. Studies on this database have been published in journals such as Nature and Science, among others.[66][67]

Other tools which may be used to detect fraudulent data include error analysis. Measurements generally have a small amount of error, and repeated measurements of the same item will generally result in slight differences in readings. These differences can be analyzed, and follow certain known mathematical and statistical properties. Should a set of data appear to be too faithful to the hypothesis, i.e., the amount of error that would normally be in such measurements does not appear, a conclusion can be drawn that the data may have been forged. Error analysis alone is typically not sufficient to prove that data have been falsified or fabricated, but it may provide the supporting evidence necessary to confirm suspicions of misconduct.

Data sharing

Kirby Lee and Lisa Bero suggest, "Although reviewing raw data can be difficult, time-consuming and expensive, having such a policy would hold authors more accountable for the accuracy of their data and potentially reduce scientific fraud or misconduct."[68]

Notable cases

Andrew Wakefield, who claimed links between the MMR vaccine, autism and inflammatory bowel disease, was found guilty of dishonesty in his research and banned from medicine by the UK General Medical Council following an investigation by Brian Deer of the London Sunday Times.[69]

Solutions

Changing research assessment

Since 2012, the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), from San Francisco, gathers many institutions, publishers and individuals committing to improve the metrics used to assess research and to stop focusing on the journal impact factor.[70]

See also

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Further reading

  • Claus Emmeche. "An old and a recent example of scientific fraud" (PowerPoint). Retrieved 2007-05-18.
  • Sam Kean (2021). The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0316496506.
  • Patricia Keith-Spiegel, Joan Sieber, and Gerald P. Koocher (November, 2010). Responding to Research Wrongdoing: A User Friendly Guide.

External links

  •   Media related to Scientific misconduct at Wikimedia Commons
  • (PDF) (for routine use during manuscript submission to a scientific journal)

scientific, misconduct, dishonesty, educational, settings, academic, dishonesty, unscientific, claims, presented, science, pseudoscience, violation, standard, codes, scholarly, conduct, ethical, behavior, publication, professional, scientific, research, lancet. For dishonesty in educational settings see Academic dishonesty For unscientific claims presented as science see Pseudoscience Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in the publication of professional scientific research A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions 1 reproduced in The COPE report 1999 2 Danish definition Intention or gross negligence leading to fabrication of the scientific message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist Swedish definition Intention al distortion of the research process by fabrication of data text hypothesis or methods from another researcher s manuscript form or publication or distortion of the research process in other ways The consequences of scientific misconduct can be damaging for perpetrators and journal audience 3 4 and for any individual who exposes it 5 In addition there are public health implications attached to the promotion of medical or other interventions based on false or fabricated research findings Three percent of the 3 475 research institutions that report to the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity indicate some form of scientific misconduct 6 However the ORI will only investigate allegations of impropriety where research was funded by federal grants They routinely monitor such research publications for red flags and their investigation is subject to a statute of limitations Other private organizations like the Committee of Medical Journal Editors COJE can only police their own members 7 The validity of the methods and results of scientific papers are often scrutinized in journal clubs In this venue members can decide amongst themselves with the help of peers if a scientific paper s ethical standards are met Contents 1 Motivation 2 Forms 2 1 Photo manipulation 2 2 Helicopter research 3 Responsibilities 3 1 Authorship responsibility 3 2 Research institution responsibility 3 3 Scientific peer responsibility 3 4 Responsibility of journals 4 Consequences of scientific misconduct 4 1 Consequences for science 4 2 Consequences for those who expose misconduct 5 Data issues 5 1 Exposure of fraudulent data 5 2 Data sharing 5 3 Notable cases 6 Solutions 6 1 Changing research assessment 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linksMotivation EditAccording to David Goodstein of Caltech there are motivators for scientists to commit misconduct which are briefly summarised here 8 Career pressure Science is still a very strongly career driven discipline Scientists depend on a good reputation to receive ongoing support and funding and a good reputation relies largely on the publication of high profile scientific papers Hence there is a strong imperative to publish or perish Clearly this may motivate desperate or fame hungry scientists to fabricate results Ease of fabrication In many scientific fields results are often difficult to reproduce accurately being obscured by noise artifacts and other extraneous data That means that even if a scientist does falsify data they can expect to get away with it or at least claim innocence if their results conflict with others in the same field There are few strongly backed systems to investigate possible violations attempt to press charges or punish deliberate misconduct It is relatively easy to cheat although difficult to know exactly how many scientists fabricate data 9 Monetary Gain In many scientific fields the most lucrative options for professionals are often selling opinions Corporations can pay experts to support products directly or indirectly via conferences Psychologists can make money by repeatedly acting as an expert witness in custody proceedings for the same law firms Forms EditThe U S National Science Foundation defines three types of research misconduct fabrication falsification and plagiarism 10 11 Fabrication is making up results and recording or reporting them This is sometimes referred to as drylabbing 12 A more minor form of fabrication is where references are included to give arguments the appearance of widespread acceptance but are actually fake or do not support the argument 13 Falsification is manipulating research materials equipment or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person s ideas processes results or words without giving appropriate credit One form is the appropriation of the ideas and results of others and publishing as to make it appear the author had performed all the work under which the data was obtained A subset is citation plagiarism willful or negligent failure to appropriately credit other or prior discoverers so as to give an improper impression of priority This is also known as citation amnesia the disregard syndrome and bibliographic negligence 14 Arguably this is the most common type of scientific misconduct Sometimes it is difficult to guess whether authors intentionally ignored a highly relevant cite or lacked knowledge of the prior work Discovery credit can also be inadvertently reassigned from the original discoverer to a better known researcher This is a special case of the Matthew effect 15 Plagiarism fabrication the act of taking an unrelated figure from an unrelated publication and reproducing it exactly in a new publication claiming that it represents new data Self plagiarism or multiple publication of the same content with different titles or in different journals is sometimes also considered misconduct scientific journals explicitly ask authors not to do this It is referred to as salami i e many identical slices in the jargon of medical journal editors According to some editors this includes publishing the same article in a different language 16 Other types of research misconduct are also recognized Ghostwriting the phenomenon where someone other than the named author s makes a major contribution Typically this is done to mask contributions from authors with a conflict of interest Conversely research misconduct is not limited to not listing authorship citation needed but also includes the act of conferring authorship on those that have not made substantial contributions to the research 17 18 This is done by senior researchers who muscle their way onto the papers of inexperienced junior researchers 19 as well as others that stack authorship in an effort to guarantee publication This is much harder to prove due to a lack of consistency in defining authorship or substantial contribution 20 21 22 Scientific misconduct can also occur during the peer review process by a reviewer or editor with a conflict of interest Reviewer coerced citation can also inflate the perceived citation impact of a researcher s work and their reputation in the scientific community 23 similar to excessive self citation Reviewers are expected to be impartial and assess the quality of their work They are expected to declare a conflict of interest to the editors if they are colleagues or competitors of the authors A rarer case of scientific misconduct is editorial misconduct 24 where an editor does not declare conflicts of interest creates pseudonyms to review papers gives strongly worded editorial decisions to support reviews suggesting to add excessive citations to their own unrelated works or to add themselves as a co author or their name to the title of the manuscript Publishing in a predatory journal knowingly or unknowingly may be considered a form of scientific misconduct 25 26 Photo manipulation Edit Compared to other forms of scientific misconduct image fraud manipulation of images to distort their meaning is of particular interest since it can frequently be detected by external parties In 2006 the Journal of Cell Biology gained publicity for instituting tests to detect photo manipulation in papers that were being considered for publication 27 This was in response to the increased usage of programs such as Adobe Photoshop by scientists which facilitate photo manipulation Since then more publishers including the Nature Publishing Group have instituted similar tests and require authors to minimize and specify the extent of photo manipulation when a manuscript is submitted for publication However there is little evidence to indicate that such tests are applied rigorously One Nature paper published in 2009 28 has subsequently been reported to contain around 20 separate instances 29 of image fraud Although the type of manipulation that is allowed can depend greatly on the type of experiment that is presented and also differ from one journal to another in general the following manipulations are not allowed citation needed splicing together different images to represent a single experiment changing brightness and contrast of only a part of the image any change that conceals information even when it is considered to be aspecific which includes changing brightness and contrast to leave only the most intense signal using clone tools to hide information showing only a very small part of the photograph so that additional information is not visibleImage manipulations are typically done on visually repetitive images such as those of blots and microscope images 30 Helicopter research Edit This section is an excerpt from Neo colonial science edit Neo colonial research or neo colonial science 31 32 frequently described as helicopter research 31 parachute science 33 34 or research 35 parasitic research 36 37 or safari study 38 is when researchers from wealthier countries go to a developing country collect information travel back to their country analyze the data and samples and publish the results with no or little involvement of local researchers A 2003 study by the Hungarian academy of sciences found that 70 of articles in a random sample of publications about least developed countries did not include a local research co author 32 Frequently during this kind of research the local colleagues might be used to provide logistics support as fixers but are not engaged for their expertise or given credit for their participation in the research Scientific publications resulting from parachute science frequently only contribute to the career of the scientists from rich countries thus limiting the development of local science capacity such as funded research centers and the careers of local scientists 31 This form of colonial science has reverberations of 19th century scientific practices of treating non Western participants as others in order to advance colonialism and critics call for the end of these extractivist practices in order to decolonize knowledge 39 40 This kind of research approach reduces the quality of research because international researchers may not ask the right questions or draw connections to local issues 41 The result of this approach is that local communities are unable to leverage the research to their own advantage 34 Ultimately especially for fields dealing with global issues like conservation biology which rely on local communities to implement solutions neo colonial science prevents institutionalization of the findings in local communities in order to address issues being studied by scientists 34 39 Responsibilities EditAuthorship responsibility Edit All authors of a scientific publication are expected to have made reasonable attempts to check findings submitted to academic journals for publication Simultaneous submission of scientific findings to more than one journal or duplicate publication of findings is usually regarded as misconduct under what is known as the Ingelfinger rule named after the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine 1967 1977 Franz Ingelfinger 42 Guest authorship where there is stated authorship in the absence of involvement also known as gift authorship and ghost authorship where the real author is not listed as an author are commonly regarded as forms of research misconduct In some cases coauthors of faked research have been accused of inappropriate behavior or research misconduct for failing to verify reports authored by others or by a commercial sponsor Examples include the case of Gerald Schatten who co authored with Hwang Woo Suk the case of Professor Geoffrey Chamberlain named as guest author of papers fabricated by Malcolm Pearce 43 Chamberlain was exonerated from collusion in Pearce s deception 44 and the coauthors with Jan Hendrik Schon at Bell Laboratories More recent cases include that of Charles Nemeroff 45 then the editor in chief of Neuropsychopharmacology and a well documented case involving the drug Actonel 46 Authors are expected to keep all study data for later examination even after publication The failure to keep data may be regarded as misconduct Some scientific journals require that authors provide information to allow readers to determine whether the authors might have commercial or non commercial conflicts of interest Authors are also commonly required to provide information about ethical aspects of research particularly where research involves human or animal participants or use of biological material Provision of incorrect information to journals may be regarded as misconduct Financial pressures on universities have encouraged this type of misconduct The majority of recent cases of alleged misconduct involving undisclosed conflicts of interest or failure of the authors to have seen scientific data involve collaborative research between scientists and biotechnology companies 45 47 Research institution responsibility Edit In general defining whether an individual is guilty of misconduct requires a detailed investigation by the individual s employing academic institution Such investigations require detailed and rigorous processes and can be extremely costly Furthermore the more senior the individual under suspicion the more likely it is that conflicts of interest will compromise the investigation In many countries with the notable exception of the United States acquisition of funds on the basis of fraudulent data is not a legal offence and there is consequently no regulator to oversee investigations into alleged research misconduct Universities therefore have few incentives to investigate allegations in a robust manner or act on the findings of such investigations if they vindicate the allegation Well publicised cases illustrate the potential role that senior academics in research institutions play in concealing scientific misconduct A King s College London internal investigation showed research findings from one of their researchers to be at best unreliable and in many cases spurious 48 but the college took no action such as retracting relevant published research or preventing further episodes from occurring It was only 10 years later when an entirely separate form of misconduct by the same individual was being investigated by the General Medical Council that the internal report came to light citation needed In a more recent case 49 an internal investigation at the National Centre for Cell Science NCCS Pune determined that there was evidence of misconduct by Dr Gopal Kundu but an external committee was then organised which dismissed the allegation and the NCCS issued a memorandum exonerating the authors of all charges of misconduct Undeterred by the NCCS exoneration the relevant journal Journal of Biological Chemistry withdrew the paper based on its own analysis Scientific peer responsibility Edit Some academics believe that scientific colleagues who suspect scientific misconduct should consider taking informal action themselves or reporting their concerns 50 This question is of great importance since much research suggests that it is very difficult for people to act or come forward when they see unacceptable behavior unless they have help from their organizations A User friendly Guide and the existence of a confidential organizational ombudsman may help people who are uncertain about what to do or afraid of bad consequences for their speaking up 51 Responsibility of journals Edit Journals are responsible for safeguarding the research record and hence have a critical role in dealing with suspected misconduct This is recognised by the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE which has issued clear guidelines 52 on the form e g retraction that concerns over the research record should take The COPE guidelines state that journal editors should consider retracting a publication if they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable either as a result of misconduct e g data fabrication or honest error e g miscalculation or experimental error Retraction is also appropriate in cases of redundant publication plagiarism and unethical research Journal editors should consider issuing an expression of concern if they receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors institution will not investigate the case they believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been or would not be fair and impartial or conclusive or an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time Journal editors should consider issuing a correction if a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading especially because of honest error or the author contributor list is incorrect i e a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included Evidence emerged in 2012 that journals learning of cases where there is strong evidence of possible misconduct with issues potentially affecting a large portion of the findings frequently fail to issue an expression of concern or correspond with the host institution so that an investigation can be undertaken In one case the Journal of Clinical Oncology issued a Correction despite strong evidence that the original paper was invalid 53 failed verification In another case 28 Nature allowed a Corrigendum to be published despite clear evidence of image fraud Subsequent Retraction of the paper required the actions of an independent whistleblower 54 The cases of Joachim Boldt and Yoshitaka Fujii 55 in anaesthesiology focussed attention on the role that journals play in perpetuating scientific fraud as well as how they can deal with it In the Boldt case the Editors in Chief of 18 specialist journals generally anaesthesia and intensive care made a joint statement regarding 88 published clinical trials conducted without Ethics Committee approval In the Fujii case involving nearly 200 papers the journal Anesthesia amp Analgesia which published 24 of Fujii s papers has accepted that its handling of the issue was inadequate Following publication of a Letter to the Editor from Kranke and colleagues in April 2000 56 along with a non specific response from Dr Fujii there was no follow up on the allegation of data manipulation and no request for an institutional review of Dr Fujii s research Anesthesia amp Analgesia went on to publish 11 additional manuscripts by Dr Fujii following the 2000 allegations of research fraud with Editor Steven Shafer stating 57 in March 2012 that subsequent submissions to the Journal by Dr Fujii should not have been published without first vetting the allegations of fraud In April 2012 Shafer led a group of editors to write a joint statement 58 in the form of an ultimatum made available to the public to a large number of academic institutions where Fujii had been employed offering these institutions the chance to attest to the integrity of the bulk of the allegedly fraudulent papers Consequences of scientific misconduct EditConsequences for science Edit The consequences of scientific fraud vary based on the severity of the fraud the level of notice it receives and how long it goes undetected For cases of fabricated evidence the consequences can be wide ranging with others working to confirm or refute the false finding or with research agendas being distorted to address the fraudulent evidence The Piltdown Man fraud is a case in point The significance of the bona fide fossils that were being found was muted for decades because they disagreed with Piltdown Man and the preconceived notions that those faked fossils supported In addition the prominent paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward spent time at Piltdown each year until he died trying to find more Piltdown Man remains The misdirection of resources kept others from taking the real fossils more seriously and delayed the reaching of a correct understanding of human evolution The Taung Child which should have been the death knell for the view that the human brain evolved first was instead treated very critically because of its disagreement with the Piltdown Man evidence In the case of Prof Don Poldermans the misconduct occurred in reports of trials of treatment to prevent death and myocardial infarction in patients undergoing operations 59 The trial reports were relied upon to issue guidelines that applied for many years across North America and Europe 60 In the case of Dr Alfred Steinschneider two decades and tens of millions of research dollars were lost trying to find the elusive link between infant sleep apnea which Steinschneider said he had observed and recorded in his laboratory and sudden infant death syndrome SIDS of which he stated it was a precursor The cover was blown in 1994 22 years after Steinschneider s 1972 Pediatrics paper claiming such an association 61 when Waneta Hoyt the mother of the patients in the paper was arrested indicted and convicted on five counts of second degree murder for the smothering deaths of her five children 62 While that in itself was bad enough the paper presumably written as an attempt to save infants lives ironically was ultimately used as a defense by parents suspected in multiple deaths of their own children in cases of Munchausen syndrome by proxy The 1972 Pediatrics paper was cited in 404 papers in the interim and is still listed on Pubmed without comment 63 Consequences for those who expose misconduct Edit The potentially severe consequences for individuals who are found to have engaged in misconduct also reflect on the institutions that host or employ them and also on the participants in any peer review process that has allowed the publication of questionable research This means that a range of actors in any case may have a motivation to suppress any evidence or suggestion of misconduct Persons who expose such cases commonly called whistleblowers find themselves open to retaliation by a number of different means 43 These negative consequences for exposers of misconduct have driven the development of whistle blowers charters designed to protect those who raise concerns Data issues EditExposure of fraudulent data Edit With the advancement of the internet there are now several tools available to aid in the detection of plagiarism and multiple publication within biomedical literature One tool developed in 2006 by researchers in Dr Harold Garner s laboratory at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas is Deja vu 64 an open access database containing several thousand instances of duplicate publication All of the entries in the database were discovered through the use of text data mining algorithm eTBLAST also created in Dr Garner s laboratory The creation of Deja vu 65 and the subsequent classification of several hundred articles contained therein have ignited much discussion in the scientific community concerning issues such as ethical behavior journal standards and intellectual copyright Studies on this database have been published in journals such as Nature and Science among others 66 67 Other tools which may be used to detect fraudulent data include error analysis Measurements generally have a small amount of error and repeated measurements of the same item will generally result in slight differences in readings These differences can be analyzed and follow certain known mathematical and statistical properties Should a set of data appear to be too faithful to the hypothesis i e the amount of error that would normally be in such measurements does not appear a conclusion can be drawn that the data may have been forged Error analysis alone is typically not sufficient to prove that data have been falsified or fabricated but it may provide the supporting evidence necessary to confirm suspicions of misconduct Data sharing Edit Kirby Lee and Lisa Bero suggest Although reviewing raw data can be difficult time consuming and expensive having such a policy would hold authors more accountable for the accuracy of their data and potentially reduce scientific fraud or misconduct 68 Notable cases Edit See also Scientific misconduct incidents Andrew Wakefield who claimed links between the MMR vaccine autism and inflammatory bowel disease was found guilty of dishonesty in his research and banned from medicine by the UK General Medical Council following an investigation by Brian Deer of the London Sunday Times 69 Solutions EditChanging research assessment Edit Since 2012 the Declaration on Research Assessment DORA from San Francisco gathers many institutions publishers and individuals committing to improve the metrics used to assess research and to stop focusing on the journal impact factor 70 See also EditAcademic dishonesty Archaeological forgery Bioethics Bullying in academia Committee on Publication Ethics Conflicts of interest in academic publishing Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty Engineering ethics Fabrication science Fraud Hippocratic Oath for scientists International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Japanese scientific misconduct allegations List of cognitive biases List of experimental errors and frauds in physics List of fallacies List of memory biases List of topics characterized as pseudoscience Lysenkoism Mertonian norms Metascience Pathological science Politicization of science Reproducibility Research ethics Research integrity Research paper mill Retraction Scientific method Scientific plagiarism in India Scientific plagiarism in the United States Sham peer review Source criticism United States Office of Research Integrity ORI Betrayers of the Truth Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles Straight and Crooked Thinking The Great Betrayal Fraud In ScienceReferences Edit Nylenna M Andersen D Dahlquist G Sarvas M Aakvaag A 1999 Handling of scientific dishonesty in the Nordic countries National Committees on Scientific Dishonesty in the Nordic Countries Lancet 354 9172 57 61 doi 10 1016 S0140 6736 98 07133 5 PMID 10406378 S2CID 36326829 Coping with fraud PDF The COPE Report 1999 11 18 Archived from the original PDF on 2007 09 28 Retrieved 2006 09 02 It is 10 years to the month since Stephen Lock Reproduced with kind permission of the Editor The Lancet Xie Yun 2008 08 12 What are the consequences of scientific misconduct Ars Technica Retrieved 2013 03 01 Redman B K Merz J F 2008 SOCIOLOGY Scientific Misconduct Do the Punishments Fit the Crime PDF Science 321 5890 775 doi 10 1126 science 1158052 PMID 18687942 S2CID 206512870 Consequences of Whistleblowing for the Whistleblower in Misconduct in Science Cases Research Triangle Institute 1995 Archived from the original PDF on 2017 08 24 Retrieved 2012 05 24 Singh Dr Yatendra Kumar Kumar Dubey Bipin 2021 Introduction of Research Methods and Publication Ethics New Delhi Friends Publications India p 90 ISBN 978 93 90649 38 9 https ori hhs gov sites default files 42 cfr parts 50 and 93 2005 pdf Archived 2021 10 22 at the Wayback Machine bare URL PDF Goodstein David January February 2002 Scientific misconduct Academe 88 1 28 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PowerPoint Retrieved 2007 05 18 Sam Kean 2021 The Icepick Surgeon Murder Fraud Sabotage Piracy and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science Little Brown and Company ISBN 978 0316496506 Patricia Keith Spiegel Joan Sieber and Gerald P Koocher November 2010 Responding to Research Wrongdoing A User Friendly Guide External links Edit Media related to Scientific misconduct at Wikimedia Commons Publication ethics checklist PDF for routine use during manuscript submission to a scientific journal Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Scientific misconduct amp oldid 1136410519, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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