Scientific integrity, misconduct in science.

Abstract

Many scientists consider scientific integrity to be a self-evident basic moral attitude. They are of the honest opinion that scientific misconduct is very rare and they also cannot imagine that it could in fact occur in their own institutions.However, this opinion must be considered in the light of international experience in this respect. There are still many examples of scientific misconduct. Striking examples are taken up by the media, such as the South Korean case of pretended successful cloning of human blastocytes, from which embryonal stem cells were said to have been cultured and which in fact proved to be the result of a hoax [1], or the “proof”, from Norway, that antiinflammatory drugs reduce the incidence of cancer of the mouth, which was in fact based on totally fictitious data [2]. Switzerland is also involved.A very special example is the case of a theological ethicist who was accused of plagiarism at the University of Geneva [3]. The US Office of Research Integrity regularly publishes new medical cases in its newsletters [4]. The following text is based on, among other things, the guidelines published by the Swiss Academies of Sciences to provide research institutions, their students and their personnel with an overview of the subject. These guidelines, under the title “Scientific Integrity. Principles and Procedures”, were drawn up by a working group of the four scientific academies and published in 2008 [5].