Scientific Misconduct and Fraud Herbst, Marcel
The European Legacy, Toward New Paradigms,
01/02/2022, Letnik:
27, Številka:
1
Journal Article, Book Review
...the initial and primary purpose of rational and modest research rewards, including financial or reputational rewards for publications and grant applications in some academic institutions, ...encourages researchers to improve their academic level and accelerate the transformation of research results under the premise of scientific integrity. ...some researchers do not clearly understand the importance of obtaining ethical approval before starting a study, leading to the occurrence of ethical issues.2 What has the Chinese government done to improve scientific integrity? Based on its importance and superiority, many institutions in China evaluate their faculties' academic performance by identifying their ability to get NSFC grants. ...researchers in China are under tremendous pressure to obtain NSFC funding, and some of them have taken advantage of the application system to commit fraud. ...we sincerely hope that researchers can join our efforts to reshape the academic landscape and pledge to improve scientific integrity to create a clean research environment, together for consolidating the foundation of research and enhancing the competitiveness of science and technology in China.Conflicts of interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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.
The book examines the social consequences of courtroom talk through detailed investigation of the cross-examination of three Australian Aboriginal boys in the case against six police officers charged ...with their abduction. Critical sociolinguistic analysis shows how courtroom talk, with its related assumptions about how language works, can serve to legitimize neocolonial control over Indigenous people.
The number of retracted scientific articles has been increasing. Most retractions are associated with research misconduct, entailing financial costs to funding sources and damage to the careers of ...those committing misconduct. We sought to calculate the magnitude of these effects. Data relating to retracted manuscripts and authors found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct were reviewed from public databases. Attributable costs of retracted manuscripts, and publication output and funding of researchers found to have committed misconduct were determined. We found that papers retracted due to misconduct accounted for approximately $58 million in direct funding by the NIH between 1992 and 2012, less than 1% of the NIH budget over this period. Each of these articles accounted for a mean of $392,582 in direct costs (SD $423,256). Researchers experienced a median 91.8% decrease in publication output and large declines in funding after censure by the ORI.
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.
Research on misconduct suggests that accusations against industry peers generate negative consequences for non-accused firms (a “stigma effect”). Yet, building on research on competitive dynamics, we ...infer that such accusations can benefit non-accused firms that compete with these peers (a “competition effect”). To reconcile these opposing perspectives, we posit that the negative stigma effect will increase with greater product market overlap between the non-accused firm and its accused peer, up to a point, beyond which the positive competition effect will counterbalance it. We further conjecture that the competition effect will be relatively more pronounced when the market classification used by investors for assessing the market overlap is more fine-grained. Accordingly, we suggest that more sophisticated investors, who rely on more fine-grained market classifications, increase their shareholdings in non-accused firms to a greater extent than less sophisticated investors as the market overlap between the non-accused firm and the accused peer increases. Using elaborate data on products and investments, we analyze investors’ shareholdings and stock market returns of non-accused firms in the U.S. software industry following accusations of financial misconduct by their industry peers, and we find support for our predictions. Our study elucidates the interplay between stigma and competition following misconduct by industry peers.
Scientific Misconduct Gross, Charles
Annual review of psychology,
01/2016, Letnik:
67, Številka:
1
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.
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