Abstract
Increased focus on scientific developments and technological innovations and continuously rising research funding have led to numerous cases of research misconduct that blurs the boundaries between ethics, science, and culture. In our paper, we aim to develop a framework for understanding management and governance in the self-discipline stance, based on case studies from Japan. We adopted a quantity approach by examining cases from 2015 to 2019 provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT), seeking to analyze the relationship between the handling of research misconduct in Japan and the relevant national regulations from the perspective of behavior definition, investigation process, responsibility, the process of the investigator, and handling measures. The results of this analysis will help to determine improved methods for processing and making decisions, and conducting assessments while examining cases of research misconduct.
Highlights
In recent years, research misconduct has become a notable problem
Increased focus on scientific developments and technological innovations and continuously rising research funding have led to numerous cases of research misconduct that blurs the boundaries between ethics, science, and culture
The 2015 guidelines conducted a periodical exploration about storing experimental data, essential precautions for researchers, the scope of research misconduct other than fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP), as well as reference standards on research ethics instruction
Summary
Increased focus on scientific developments and technological innovations and continuously rising research funding have led to numerous cases of research misconduct that blurs the boundaries between ethics, science, and culture. Efforts to reduce research misconduct are expanding in government organizations, funding agencies, research institutes, and the academic field in general. Countries conduct diversified national research misconduct governance based on their national conditions. Some countries, such as the US, utilize a unique system. The US has set up government agencies to observe institutional investigations. These agencies have the authority to pass final decisions on cases of misconduct, whereas other countries do not utilize such systems (Matsuzawa, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; Nouchi et al, 2020). One of the most prolific cases of research misconduct was that of Japanese stem-cell biologist Haruko Obokata and her fellow researchers’ claims on a stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency cells in 2014 (Sugawara et al, 2017)
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