Abstract
Pressures to publish, perverse incentives, financial interest and gender are amongst the most commonly discussed risk factors for scientific misconduct. However, evidence of their association with actual data fabrication and falsification is inconclusive. A recent case-controlled analysis of articles containing problematic image duplications suggested that country of affiliation of first and last authors is a significant predictor of scientific misconduct. The same analysis found null or negative associations with individual proxies of publication rate, impact and gender. The latter findings, in line with previous evidence, failed to support common hypotheses about the prevalence and causes of misconduct, but country-level effects may have confounded these results. Here we extend and complete previous results by comparing, via matched-controls analysis, articles from authors in the same country. We found that evidence for individual-level risk factors may be significant in some countries, and null or opposite in others. In particular, in countries where publications are rewarded with cash incentives, and especially China, the risk of problematic image duplication was higher for more productive, more frequently cited, earlier-career researchers working in lower-ranking institutions, in accordance with a "misaligned incentives" explanation for scientific misconduct. However, a null or opposite pattern was observed in all other countries, and especially the USA, UK and Canada, countries where concerns for misaligned incentives are commonly expressed. In line with previous results, we failed to observe a statistically significant association with industry funding and with gender. This is the first direct evidence of a link between publication performance and risk of misconduct and between university ranking and risk of misconduct. Commonly hypothesised individual risk factors for scientific misconduct, including career status and productivity, might be relevant in countries where cash-reward policies generate perverse incentives. In most scientifically active countries, however, where other incentives systems are in place, these patterns are not observed, and other risk factors might be more relevant. Policies to prevent and correct scientific misconduct may need to be tailored to a countries' or institutions' specific context.
Highlights
Understanding the psychological, sociological and structural factors that increase the risk of scientific misconduct is a core objective of research on research integrity and meta-science more generally
This study completed and extended that analysis by assessing how the probability of duplicating images varies with commonly hypothesised risk factors for scientific misconduct, once country-level effects are controlled for
Results of this and the previous analysis suggest that some common hypotheses about the social and psychological determinants of scientific misconduct are not or negatively supported, whereas other hypotheses may or may not be supported, depending on the country of affiliation of the author, possibly due to the structure of incentives policies that operates in the country
Summary
Understanding the psychological, sociological and structural factors that increase the risk of scientific misconduct is a core objective of research on research integrity and meta-science more generally. Identifying such factors is of theoretical interest, as it contributes to our understanding of causal patterns in human behaviour, as well as pragmatic interest, because it is the basis for designing policies and interventions to prevent research misconduct. One of the most commonly discussed structural risk factors for scientific misconduct are “pressures to publish”–that is, unrealistic productivity standards imposed on academics, which may compel them to “cut corners” in order to sustain high levels of productivity and impact [1]. Analyses of the literature have repeatedly failed to observe positive correlations between individual productivity or citation impact and poor research quality, at least when the latter was measured as the likelihood to correct or retract articles [6] or to publish over-estimated effect sizes [7,8]
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