Publish or perish in China Qiu, Jane
Nature (London),
01/2010, Letnik:
463, Številka:
7278
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Many blamed the culture of jigong jinli - seeking quick success and short-term gain - as the top reason for such practices, says Zeng Guopin, director of the Institute of Science Technology and ...Society at Tsinghua University in Beijing who was involved in running the survey. Most academic evaluation - from staff employment and job promotion to funding allocation - is carried out by bureaucrats who are not experts in the field in question, says Fang Shimin, a US-trained biochemist who runs a website called 'New Threads' that exposes research misconduct in China.
A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In ...contrast 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%). Incomplete, uninformative or misleading retraction announcements have led to a previous underestimation of the role of fraud in the ongoing retraction epidemic. The percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased ~10-fold since 1975. Retractions exhibit distinctive temporal and geographic patterns that may reveal underlying causes.
It is commonly hypothesized that scientists are more likely to engage in data falsification and fabrication when they are subject to pressures to publish, when they are not restrained by forms of ...social control, when they work in countries lacking policies to tackle scientific misconduct, and when they are male. Evidence to test these hypotheses, however, is inconclusive due to the difficulties of obtaining unbiased data. Here we report a pre-registered test of these four hypotheses, conducted on papers that were identified in a previous study as containing problematic image duplications through a systematic screening of the journal PLoS ONE. Image duplications were classified into three categories based on their complexity, with category 1 being most likely to reflect unintentional error and category 3 being most likely to reflect intentional fabrication. We tested multiple parameters connected to the hypotheses above with a matched-control paradigm, by collecting two controls for each paper containing duplications. Category 1 duplications were mostly not associated with any of the parameters tested, as was predicted based on the assumption that these duplications were mostly not due to misconduct. Categories 2 and 3, however, exhibited numerous statistically significant associations. Results of univariable and multivariable analyses support the hypotheses that academic culture, peer control, cash-based publication incentives and national misconduct policies might affect scientific integrity. No clear support was found for the “pressures to publish” hypothesis. Female authors were found to be equally likely to publish duplicated images compared to males. Country-level parameters generally exhibited stronger effects than individual-level parameters, because developing countries were significantly more likely to produce problematic image duplications. This suggests that promoting good research practices in all countries should be a priority for the international research integrity agenda.
Scientific Misconduct Gross, Charles
Annual review of psychology,
01/2016, Letnik:
67
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Scientific misconduct has been defined as fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Scientific misconduct has occurred throughout the history of science. The US government began to take systematic ...interest in such misconduct in the 1980s. Since then, a number of studies have examined how frequently individual scientists have observed scientific misconduct or were involved in it. Although the studies vary considerably in their methodology and in the nature and size of their samples, in most studies at least 10% of the scientists sampled reported having observed scientific misconduct. In addition to studies of the incidence of scientific misconduct, this review considers the recent increase in paper retractions, the role of social media in scientific ethics, several instructional examples of egregious scientific misconduct, and potential methods to reduce research misconduct.
Scientific misconducts: paper mills in Peru Mayta-Tristán, Percy; Borja-García, Ruben
Revista peruana de medicina experimental y salud pública,
2022 Oct-Dec, 20221001, Letnik:
39, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Prevalence of research misconduct, questionable research practices (QRPs) and their associations with a range of explanatory factors has not been studied sufficiently among academic researchers. The ...National Survey on Research Integrity targeted all disciplinary fields and academic ranks in the Netherlands. It included questions about engagement in fabrication, falsification and 11 QRPs over the previous three years, and 12 explanatory factor scales. We ensured strict identity protection and used the randomized response method for questions on research misconduct. 6,813 respondents completed the survey. Prevalence of fabrication was 4.3% (95% CI: 2.9, 5.7) and of falsification 4.2% (95% CI: 2.8, 5.6). Prevalence of QRPs ranged from 0.6% (95% CI: 0.5, 0.9) to 17.5% (95% CI: 16.4, 18.7) with 51.3% (95% CI: 50.1, 52.5) of respondents engaging frequently in at least one QRP. Being a PhD candidate or junior researcher increased the odds of frequently engaging in at least one QRP, as did being male. Scientific norm subscription (odds ratio (OR) 0.79; 95% CI: 0.63, 1.00) and perceived likelihood of detection by reviewers (OR 0.62, 95% CI: 0.44, 0.88) were associated with engaging in less research misconduct. Publication pressure was associated with more often engaging in one or more QRPs frequently (OR 1.22, 95% CI: 1.14, 1.30). We found higher prevalence of misconduct than earlier surveys. Our results suggest that greater emphasis on scientific norm subscription, strengthening reviewers in their role as gatekeepers of research quality and curbing the "publish or perish" incentive system promotes research integrity.
PDF
