Perceptions of Research Misconduct and an Analysis of Their Correlates

Abstract

The lay public presumes that professions are self-regulating. In exchange for self-regulation, they are granted autonomy over the conduct of their professional roles (25). In the academic profession, self-regulation encompasses the full spectrum of scholarly activities including the enforcement of standards and ethical principles for the conduct of research (5). However, the effectiveness of self-regulation in the academic profession is currently being challenged. To elaborate, in recent the public has perceived misconduct as growing, if not pervasive, throughout science. In a recent survey of a sample of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) -- the nation's largest umbrella organization for the scientific community -- three-fourths of those responding indicated that media coverage had exaggerated the problem (1). Nevertheless, 37 percent of those polled did believe that instances of fraud and misconduct had increased over the last decade. Moreover, a separate assessment by the National Science Foundation concludes: 20 percent of the scientists say that they have directly encountered fraud, and about 20 percent of graduate deans have dealt with verified cases of misconduct in the past five years [(35) p. 1]. This conclusion was derived from a review of six survey studies that measured the extent of misconduct in science and engineering. These perceptions and experiences have fostered a broad range of actions by the scientific community, including: * A call to graduate programs in science to integrate coursework on ethics into the curriculum. * Numerous sessions and panel discussions scheduled at various professional association meetings. * Editorials in many professional journals. * Changes in editorial policies of some journals, whose editors now require each coauthor of a paper to acknowledge his or her contribution and responsibility for the content of the article. * A regular quarterly newsletter, Professional Ethics Report, published by AAAS, as a means to inform the general community of scientists on evolving issues and actions. * Congressional committee hearings on misconduct in medical and scientific research. * Revised or new codes of ethics that address fraud and misconduct by a large number of scientific professional organizations and associations. * Mandatory requirements to establish institutional panels to oversee issues related to research ethics and allegations of scientific misconduct at research universities receiving federal research funds. * Establishment, in various federal agencies which support scientific research of new offices, that are expressly charged with setting up policies and procedures regarding allegations of misconduct, addressing charges of misconduct, overseeing investigations, and recommending or meting out sanctions. These actions represent the exercise of some degree of responsibility for deterring, detecting, and sanctioning research misconduct by the various loci of responsibility for addressing misconduct that have been identified by Chubin (13): the laboratory, the institution of employment, scientific societies and journals, governmental agencies, and private foundations. Of utmost importance, however, is the responsibility of professional peers for detecting and deterring research wrongdoing (13). They are thus critical to the efficacy of the actions that have been taken by the scientific community listed above; if individual academics do not detect and address misconduct, then such wrongdoing is unlikely to be sanctioned. Despite the importance of the actions of individual academics to the process of self-regulation, Chubin points to the silent suspicions of peers regarding violations of ethical principles and norms which are left undocumented, and asks why these academics do not speak out [(13) p. 187]. Moreover, when science faculty do take action, it is generally informal and decentralized (7)(44)(45). …