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Scientific misconduct

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Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. The main forms of scientific misconduct are:

  • fabrication--the publication of deliberately false or misleading research, often subdivided in:
    • fabrication--the actual making up of research data and (the intent of) publishing them
    • falsification--manipulation of research data and processes or omitting critical data or results
  • plagiarism--the act of taking credit (or attempting to take credit) for the work of another. A subset is
    • Citation Plagarism-- willful or negligent failure to appropriatly credit other investigators, so as to give an improper impression of priority. AKA, "citation amnesia", the "disregard syndrome" and "bibliographic negligence". Arguably, the most common type of scientific misconduct. Improper credit can also be indvertantly assigend, see Dulbecco's law.
  • the violation of ethical standards regarding human and animal experiments, such as the standard that a human subject of the experiment must give informed consent to the experiment.

Example definitions from *Lancet paper on Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries

  • Danish Definition: "Intention(al) 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 fadrication of data, text, hypothesis, or methods from another researcher's manuscript form or publication; or distortion of the research process in other ways."

In addition, some academics consider suppression--the failure to publish significant findings due to the results being adverse to the interests of the researcher or his/her sponsor(s)--to be a form of misconduct as well; this is discussed below.

In some cases, scientific misconduct may also constitute violations of the law, but not always. Being accused of the activities described in this article is a serious matter for a practicing scientist, with severe consequences should it be determined that a researcher intentionally or carelessly engaged in misconduct.

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. (Source: Wired Magazine, March 2004)

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 to commit scientific misconduct

According to David Goodstein of Caltech, there are three main motivators for scientists to commit misconduct, which are briefly summarised here.

  • 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.

  • "Knowing the right answer"

Even on the rare occasions when scientists do falsify data, they almost never do so with the active intent to introduce false information into the body of scientific knowledge. Rather, they intend to introduce a fact that they believe is true, without going to the trouble and difficulty of actually performing the experiments required.

  • "The ability to get away with it"

In most 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.


Rehabilitation

The accusation of scientific misconduct is as controversial as knowledge is generally under construction. It may occur that the scientific community make errors in accusing one of their colleagues. Generally, it is not so damaging for knowledge which still progress. The scientific community is known for its self-regulation. But, it can brake careers and destinies and anyone is set to face its errors. Still, the French community of geologists made a public rehabilitation of Jacques Deprat who was accused in 1919. It seems to be the unique case of rehabilitation in the history of sciences.

Suppression/non-publication of data

A related issue concerns the deliberate suppression, failure to publish, or selective release of the findings of scientific studies. Such cases may not be strictly definable as scientific misconduct as the deliberate falsification of results is not present. However, in such cases the intent may nevertheless be to deliberately deceive. Studies may be suppressed or remain unpublished because the findings are perceived to undermine the commercial, political or other interests of the sponsoring agent or because they fail to support the ideological goals of the researcher. Examples include the failure to publish studies if they demonstrate the harm of a new drug, or truthfully publishing the benefits of a treatment while omitting harmful side-effects.

This is distinguishable from other concepts such as bad science, junk science or pseudoscience where the criticism centres on the methodology or underlying assumptions. It may be possible in some cases to use statistical methods to show that the datasets offered in relation to a given field are incomplete. However this may simply reflect the existence of real-world restrictions on researchers without justifying more sinister conclusions.

Some cases go beyond the failure to publish complete reports of all findings with researchers knowingly making false claims based on falsified data. This falls clearly under the definition of scientific misconduct, even if the result was achieved by suppressing data. In the case of Raphael B. Stricker, M.D.[5], for instance, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity has found the removal of samples from a data set in order to reach a desired conclusion to be grounds for disbarment from funding.

Photo Manipulation

In 2006, the Journal of Cell Biology gained publicity [6] for instituting tests to detect photo manipulation in papers that were being considered for publication. This was in response to the increased usage of programs by scientists such as Photoshop, which facilitate photo manipulation. Since then more publishers, including the Nature Publishing Group are instituting similar test and require authors to minimize and specify the extent of photo manipulation when a manuscript is submitted for publication

Although the type of manipulations that are 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:

  • 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

And more in general, most journals nowadays urge authors to use photo manipulation with restraint and great care.

See also

References

  • William Broad & Nicholas Wade, Betrayers of the Truth. Oxford University Press, 1982
  • Brock K. Kilbourne and Maria T. Kilbourne, The Dark Side of Science, Proc. of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, AAAS, April 30, 1983.
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