Cases Of Scientific Misconduct Research Articles

Overcoming the “Ostrich Effect”: A Narrative Review on the Incentives and Consequences of Questionable Research Practices in Kinesiology

Increasing transparency and openness in science is an ongoing endeavor, one that has stimulated self-reflection and reform in many fields. However, kinesiology and its related disciplines are among those exhibiting an “ostrich effect” and a reluctance to acknowledge their methodological shortcomings. Notwithstanding several high-profile cases of scientific misconduct, scholars in the field are frequently engaged in questionable research practices (QRPs) such as biased experimental designs, inappropriate statistics, and dishonest/inexplicit reporting. To advance their careers, researchers are also “gaming the system” by manipulating citation metrics and publishing in predatory and/or pay-to-publish journals that lack robust peer review. The consequences of QRPs in the discipline may be profound: from increasing the false positivity rate to eroding public trust in the very institutions tasked with informing public health policy. But what are the incentives underpinning misconduct and QRPs? And what are the solutions? This narrative review is a consciousness raiser that explores (a) the manifestations of QRPs in kinesiology; (b) the excessive publication pressures, funding pressures, and performance incentives that are likely responsible; and (c) possible solutions for reform.

The future of ChatGPT in academic research and publishing: A commentary for clinical and translational medicine

The future of ChatGPT in academic research and publishing: A commentary for <i>clinical and translational medicine</i>

Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) historical discovery milestones.

The present paper provides a summarized identification of critical historical milestones in the discovery of the flawed and corrupt foundations of cancer risk assessment, with particular focus on the LNT Dose Response model. The milestone sequence presented herein is based on a large body of published findings by the author. The history of LNT and cancer response represents what may be the most significant case of scientific misconduct reported in the US, with its revelation severely damaging the scientific credibility and moral authority of leading US regulatory agencies and organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the journal Science. The consequences of this corrupt history are substantial, affecting cancer risk assessment throughout the world, critical aspects of national economies, the development of critical technologies and public health practices.

La Oficina de Integridad Científica en España. Una tarea pendiente

In recent years, many cases of scientific misconduct have come to light, some with considerable consequences, highlighting the existing breaches in the scientific integrity globally. In Spain, there have also been high-profile cases of scientific misconduct. However, so far, no organism or agency has been created to monitor the execution, analysis and publication phases of biomedical research from an ethical point of view. Therefore, in this context, we consider that there is a need for the creation of an office which supervises research integrity in Spain which would act in cases of suspected scientific misconduct, carrying out an independent investigation and proposing public sanctions. The existence of such an organism would be of particular importance in the case of publicly funded research, since in that case research fraud would involve the misappropriation of public funds. The creation of an office that would act on detected cases could have a deterrent effect on potential misconduct by some researchers, thus preventing cases of scientific misconduct.

Retraction in the online world—Shall we rethink the policy?

Abstract In case of scientific misconduct, the papers can be retracted at the request of the journal’s editors and/or authors. However, the retracted articles continue to be fully available through online resources, including journals websites. This paper argues that a classical retraction is insufficient to mitigate the adverse effect some retracted papers continue to have on critical issues, e.g. public health. The more strict approach, ‘Hard Retraction’, is presented for consideration. Its implementation would lead to (1) complete deletion of the full text of the retracted paper, (2) substitution of the original abstract with a detailed retraction notice, (3) removal of the paper from the citation databases, (4) deposition of the retracted paper in the dedicated repository accessible for registered members. The benefits and risks of such an approach are discussed. Nevertheless, it should only be reserved for cases of fraud or grave errors with broad impacts.

Finding Connections in Policies Covering Electronic Laboratory Notebook Retention and Transferal

Objective: As electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) capability continues to expand, more researchers are turning to this digital format. The University of Massachusetts Medical School developed new guidelines to outline the retention and transferal of ELNs. How do other universities approach the retention and transferal of laboratory notebooks, including ELNs? Methods: The websites of 25 universities were searched for policies or guidelines on laboratory notebook retention and transferal. A textual analysis of the policies was performed to find common themes. Results: Information on the retention and transferal of laboratory notebooks was found in record retention and research data policies/guidelines. Out of the 25 institutional websites searched, 16 policies/guidelines on research notebook retention were found and 10 institutions had policies/guidelines on transferring research notebooks when a researcher leaves the university. Only one policy had a retention recommendation for storage location specific to electronic media, including laboratory notebooks, that did not apply to its paper counterparts, the remaining policies either explicitly include multiple forms and media or do not mention multiple formats for research records at all. The minimum number of years of retention for research notebooks ranged from immediately after report completion to 7 years after completing the research with the possibility of extension depending on a wide range of external requirements. Most research notebook transferal policies and guidelines required associated researchers and students to request permission from their principal investigator (PI) before taking a copy of the notebook. Most institutions with policies also seek to retain access to research notebooks when a PI leaves an institution to protect intellectual property and respond to any cases of scientific misconduct or conflict of interest. Conclusions: Other universities have a range of approaches for the retention and transferal of laboratory notebooks, but most provide the same recommendations for both electronic and physical laboratory notebooks in their research data or record retention policies/guidelines.

Accountability practices in research and publication ethics on the web. Linguistic and discursive features

With the large increase in the amount of published research being carried out throughout the world, potential is mounting for ethical practices to take a back seat in the apparent frequency of reported cases of scientific misconduct. While these cases erode the credibility of scientific research and public trust in the publication process, they often delineate accountabilities between conflicting parties and require organisational and institutional responses to good research practices based on fundamental, ethical principles of research integrity. In this paper, I explore the linguistic and discursive features of research and publication ethics in a representative corpus of misconduct cases as a genre created and maintained by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) organisation over its website. Using a combined framework of methodological perspectives from functionally-defined criteria of discourse and genre categorizations (Askehave, Swales 2001; Bhatia 2004; Swales 2004) alongside evaluation (Hunston, Thompson 2000) and stance-taking (Biber et al. 1999; Hyland 2005), this study looks at the discourse organisational structure of texts with identifiable communicative moves and associated language use to unveil the types of social actors’ relations and identities constructed through “Action”, “Representation” and “Identification” (Fairclough 2003) of the social events and practices in question via recontextualization and interdiscursivity (Bhatia 2004, 2017; Fairclough 2003; Sarangi, Brookers-Howell 2006). Linguistic and rhetorical choices made on recontextualized and representational features of text reveal how cases set the tone for accountability between the social actors (parties) involved in matters of research ethics, and how they allow the organisation to take responsibility for the integrity of their research conduct by fostering a climate of responsible practices and adjusting party accountabilities. Attending to both linguistic and discursive features, the communicative practices of the case genre authenticate the competing social relations, identities, values or interests of the parties in this kind of discourse representation, and align the institutional action, identity and values of the organisation with social norms when legitimising its commitment to create and preserve conditions for ethical principles and professional standards essential for a range of responsible practices of research publishing.

Scientific Misconduct in Psychology

Abstract. Spectacular cases of scientific misconduct have contributed to concerns about the validity of published results in psychology. In our systematic review, we identified 16 studies reporting prevalence estimates of scientific misconduct and questionable research practices (QRPs) in psychological research. Estimates from these studies varied due to differences in methods and scope. Unlike other disciplines, there was no reliable lower bound prevalence estimate of scientific misconduct based on identified cases available for psychology. Thus, we conducted an additional empirical investigation on the basis of retractions in the database PsycINFO. Our analyses showed that 0.82 per 10,000 journal articles in psychology were retracted due to scientific misconduct. Between the late 1990s and 2012, there was a steep increase. Articles retracted due to scientific misconduct were identified in 20 out of 22 PsycINFO subfields. These results show that measures aiming to reduce scientific misconduct should be promoted equally across all psychological subfields.

Letter to Editor: Do Iranian Medical Journal Editors Have a Good Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Plagiarism?

In the last issue of the Journal of Paramedical Sciences, Abbasiyan, et al in their Original Article “Do the editors-in-chief of Iranian medical journals have a good knowledge, attitude and practice of plagiarism” showed that the knowledge, attitude, and the practice (KAP) of the chief editors of scholarly journals in Iranian Medical Universities located in the capital city is in high and favorable level (1.58 out of 2) [1]. I would like to discuss the probable false messages of such articles for science ethical managers in the country. For some years, every several-months or several-years a scholarly paper or news has been published to show the ethics situation of academic researches or publication ethics in Iran periodically [2-5]. Some Iranian scientists think these reports are unfair [6], and some non-Iranian reporters named it a scandal [7] ; and yet, facts demonstrate little improvements with regards to ethical situation compared with the past. I believe that accepting the already existing problems is the first step for resolving them. Although I agree with Ataie-Ashtiani [8] and others who think that some magnifications have been made on the special case of IR Iran, as Farrokhi stated, unfortunately there are some problems including the presence of misconduct and also unawareness about how to explain and excuse when a mistake is discovered [9]. As I mentioned before, although there are some defects in our laws regarding managing academic dishonesty [10], there are also other regulations and newly approved rules [11] for such issues. Such hopeful studies [1] and laws [11] shows some attainments, while I still think it is essential to create a national organization to evaluate and disclose all cases of scientific misconduct and frauds and declare their punishments publicly. If such an organization to monitor and evaluate the integrity of researches exists, it should have clear equitable strategy to approach similar cases with different scientific degrees or other types of official power or position. As stated previously, although there are some defects in our laws to manage academic dishonesty [10], there are also other regulations and newly approved rules [11] to accomplish.

Research Misconduct in East Asia’s Research Environments

High-profile cases of scientific misconduct, such as the Hwang scandal in South Korea, the Obokata scandal in Japan, and the growing number of retracted papers written by Chinese scientists have le...

Guilt by association: How scientific misconduct harms prior collaborators

Recent highly publicized cases of scientific misconduct have raised concerns about its consequences for academic careers. Previous and anecdotal evidence suggests that these reach far beyond the fraudulent scientist and (his or) her career, affecting coauthors and institutions. Here we show that the negative effects of scientific misconduct spill over to uninvolved prior collaborators: compared to a control group, prior collaborators of misconducting scientists, who have no connection to the misconduct case, are cited 8–9% less often afterwards. We suggest that the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is stigmatization by mere association. The result suggests that scientific misconduct generates large indirect costs in the form of mistrust towards a wider range of research findings than was previously assumed. The far-reaching fallout of misconduct implies that potential whistleblowers might be disinclined to make their concerns public in order to protect their own reputation and career.

Conflicts of interest in scientific publishing.

During the past years, an increasing number of research funders and governments have been supporting Open Access (OA) publishing. In the USA, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act and the Public Access to Public Science Act require that results from research supported with public funding are made freely accessible [1]. The EU has also decided that all publications funded by Horizon 2020 should be freely available [2]. Most authors who publish their work as OA—whether mandated or not—usually choose Gold OA, in which the cost of publishing is covered by the authors (Fig 1). Figure 1. The current conflicts of interest could be alleviated through a new publishing system Simplified schematic representation of conflicts of interest in Gold OA publishing (left) and how they can be alleviated (right). Accessibility to services and scientific outcomes is illustrated with locks and may be free (open) or subjected to fees (closed). However, Gold OA has some drawbacks. Most importantly, it creates a conflict of interest: in a situation where the number of scientists is larger than the number of available positions, both journals and scientists benefit from publishing as many articles as possible [3]. This is a fertile ground for cheaters on both sides, and helps to explain the emergence of predatory journals [4] and the increasing number of cases of scientific misconduct [5]. An alternative to Gold OA is Green OA, by which authors self‐archive their articles in online repositories [6]. However, the fact that Green OA lacks peer review discourages many scientists from self‐archiving their papers. In addition, journals offer …

Guilt by Association: How Scientific Misconduct Harms Prior Collaborators

Recent highly publicized cases of scientific misconduct have raised concerns about its consequences for academic careers. Previous and anecdotal evidence suggests that these reach far beyond the fraudulent scientist and her career, affecting coauthors and institutions. Here we show that the negative effects of scientific misconduct spill over to uninvolved prior collaborators: compared to a control group, prior collaborators of misconducting scientists, who have no link to the misconduct case, are cited 8 to 9% less afterwards. We suggest that the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is stigmatization by mere association. The result suggests that scientific misconduct generates large indirect costs in the form of mistrust against a wider range of research findings than was previously assumed. The broad fallout of misconduct implies that potential whistleblowers might be disinclined to make their concerns public in order to protect their own reputation and career.

Public Response to Scientific Misconduct: Assessing Changes in Public Sentiment Toward the Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) Cell Case via Twitter.

BackgroundIn this age of social media, any news—good or bad—has the potential to spread in unpredictable ways. Changes in public sentiment have the potential to either drive or limit investment in publicly funded activities, such as scientific research. As a result, understanding the ways in which reported cases of scientific misconduct shape public sentiment is becoming increasingly essential—for researchers and institutions, as well as for policy makers and funders. In this study, we thus set out to assess and define the patterns according to which public sentiment may change in response to reported cases of scientific misconduct. This study focuses on the public response to the events involved in a recent case of major scientific misconduct that occurred in 2014 in Japan—stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cell case.ObjectivesThe aims of this study were to determine (1) the patterns according to which public sentiment changes in response to scientific misconduct; (2) whether such measures vary significantly, coincident with major timeline events; and (3) whether the changes observed mirror the response patterns reported in the literature with respect to other classes of events, such as entertainment news and disaster reports.MethodsThe recent STAP cell scandal is used as a test case. Changes in the volume and polarity of discussion were assessed using a sampling of case-related Twitter data, published between January 28, 2014 and March 15, 2015. Rapidminer was used for text processing and the popular bag-of-words algorithm, SentiWordNet, was used in Rapidminer to calculate sentiment for each sample Tweet. Relative volume and sentiment was then assessed overall, month-to-month, and with respect to individual entities.ResultsDespite the ostensibly negative subject, average sentiment over the observed period tended to be neutral (−0.04); however, a notable downward trend (y=−0.01 x +0.09; R ²=.45) was observed month-to-month. Notably polarized tweets accounted for less than one-third of sampled discussion: 17.49% (1656/9467) negative and 12.59% positive (1192/9467). Significant polarization was found in only 4 out of the 15 months covered, with significant variation month-to-month (P<.001). Significant increases in polarization tended to coincide with increased discussion volume surrounding major events (P<.001).ConclusionsThese results suggest that public opinion toward scientific research may be subject to the same sensationalist dynamics driving public opinion in other, consumer-oriented topics. The patterns in public response observed here, with respect to the STAP cell case, were found to be consistent with those observed in the literature with respect to other classes of news-worthy events on Twitter. Discussion was found to become strongly polarized only during times of increased public attention, and such increases tended to be driven primarily by negative reporting and reactionary commentary.

Scientific Misconduct Hurts.

Recently, Annals of Internal Medicine experienced an egregious case of scientific misconduct that this editorial brings to light for 2 reasons: to assure readers that Annals takes such matters very...

A Review of the Scientific Misconduct Inquiry Process, Ankara Chamber of Medicine, Turkey.

The aim of this study is to review the inquiry process used in scientific misconduct cases in the Ankara Chamber of Medicine between the years 1998 and 2012. The violations of the "Disciplinary Regulations of the Turkish Medical Association" have been examined by keeping the names of the people, institutions, associations and journals secret. In total, 31 files have been studied and 11 of these files have been identified as related to scientific misconduct. The methods of inquiry, the decisions about the need for an investigation process, the types of scientific misconduct, and the adjudication processes have all been reported. Furthermore, the motives of researchers who made allegations, the study approaches of investigators, and the objections to the decisions about guilt and innocence have also been examined. Based on the findings obtained, the reasons for scientific misconduct and the distribution of responsibilities among the people in the inquiry process have been discussed. A major conclusion is the need to standardize the process of conducting inquiries about scientific misconduct cases for the regional chambers of medicine in Turkey.

High time for a common plagiarism detection system

Plagiarism represents a serious and growing problem in science, with only a fraction of such publications detected and retracted. Any initiative to deal efficiently with the problem of plagiarism would require a joint effort of academic publishers and editors. The most effective measure would be to establish a common plagiarism detection system, adopted by all peer-reviewed journals and major publishers, with automatic uploading and cross-checking of each newly submitted manuscript with both published material and all further and ongoing submissions. If adequately implemented, such system would fully resolve the problem of multiple submissions, and detect instances of plagiarism of unpublished material. Significant portion of scientific misconduct cases would be resolved, in most cases much before the publishing stage. This would greatly benefit the scientific community and science in general. The need for publishing retraction notices would be also diminished, thereby reducing the publishing costs. Lastly, the system would probably act as a deterrent, passively contributing to plagiarism frequency reduction.

Evaluation by Citation: Trends in Publication Behavior, Evaluation Criteria, and the Strive for High Impact Publications.

Criteria for the evaluation of most scholars’ work have recently received wider attention due to high-profile cases of scientific misconduct which are perceived to be linked to these criteria. However, in the competition for career advancement and funding opportunities almost all scholars are subjected to the same criteria. Therefore these evaluation criteria act as ‘switchmen’, determining the tracks along which scholarly work is pushed by the dynamic interplay of interests of both scholars and their institutions. Currently one of the most important criteria is the impact of publications. In this research, the extent to which publish or perish, a long standing evaluation criterion, led to scientific misconduct is examined briefly. After this the strive for high impact publications will be examined, firstly by identifying the period in which this became an important evaluation criterion, secondly by looking at variables contributing to the impact of scholarly papers by means of a non-structured literature study, and lastly by combining these data into a quantitative analysis.

Co-author responsibility: Distinguishing between the moral and epistemic aspects of trust.

Several high‐profile cases of research misconduct during the past decade have explicitly raised the question whether co‐authors share responsibility for scientific misconduct perpetrated by a collaborator. There is no clear answer though, as different cases of misconduct differ in terms of how the co‐authors were involved in the work. Nonetheless, media coverage, public interest, and intense debates have at least increased awareness and triggered discussion among the scientific community over the issue of co‐author responsibility. This article aims to contribute to this important discussion by analyzing four particular high‐profile cases of scientific misconduct and providing a deeper analysis of trust in research with a special emphasis on cooperators' and co‐authors' responsibility for fraudulent or flawed research. Our working hypothesis is that we can distinguish between a moral and an epistemic dimension of trust that have different repercussions for how scientists should deal with and prevent misconduct. Jan Hendrik Schon received his PhD in physics at the University of Konstanz in Germany in 1997 and started working as a postdoc at the Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, USA, in 1998, under the supervision of solid‐state physicist Bertram Batlogg. His research on superconductors seemed to make dramatic progress, and Schon published in prominent journals such as Science and Nature . In 2001, Schon published an article per week on average; papers that reported stunning results, such as a single‐molecule transistor. His unusually high productivity and extraordinary results raised suspicion among his colleagues. Other scientists eventually discovered that papers reporting different experiments contained identical graphs of random noise. They alerted officials at Bell Laboratories, who formed a misconduct investigation committee. The committee found compelling evidence of data manipulation and misrepresentation in several of Schon's papers, and during 2002–2003, almost thirty papers were withdrawn by Science , Nature , Physical Review , Applied …

Response to: Research Integrity: the Experience of a Doubting Thomas

Dealing with cases of scientific misconduct is essential for the scientists because, as Dr. Hettinger says, ‘‘it is destructive to science culture’’. It is therefore important that scientists and scientific institutions deal with these cases when they appear. The case that Dr. Hettinger comments has been very complex for the CSIC’s Ethics Committee for several reasons. The case came to attention following a letter of the Editor of Science just a few weeks after the appointment of the Committee and even before its rules of procedure were approved. The article involves 18 authors, two of them corresponding authors, from at least five different institutions and four different countries. It was a complex multidisciplinary article with data from organic chemistry to microbiology. As soon as the note of concern on the article appeared in Science, letters arrived to the Committee including one by Prof. Richard Rogers, Nobel Prize winner that strongly defended the results. The Committee appointed an ad hoc committee with experts from outside of CSIC that analyzed the article and reached conclusions very similar to those indicated by Dr. Hettinger. The authors of the article and the other institutions involved were asked to comment on the conclusions that were the basis of the recommendation to retract the article. All these actions were carried out within the mandate of the CSIC’s Ethics Committee that is an advisory board to the President of CSIC. Any further actions such as the identification of individual responsibilities or to apply disciplinary measures were outside the mandate of the Committee that recommended the President of CSIC to act in this direction. Science in Spain, as in any other country, works within the established legal framework that varies very much from one country to another. In Spain, CSIC is an institution of the Public Administration and its scientists have the status of civil servants. This situation does not favor any investigation of misconduct as, for instance, scientific fraud is not considered in the statute of civil servants. This limitation has been openly criticized in Spanish journals. Copies of these publications, of course written in Spanish or Catalan, may be made available to the interested reader. Following the ‘‘reactome’’ case, the CSIC’s Ethics committee published a statement of guidance for authors of multidisciplinary articles. In his resolution, the Committee also stated that peer review did only a partial analysis of the results of the article and this opinion was also communicated to the editor of Science. In any case, the experience of the CSIC’s Ethics Committee demonstrates the importance and difficulty of dealing with complex cases of alleged misconduct. Those taking on these responsibilities, especially in its initial phases, should be aware that their work will rarely be appreciated by the people involved in the cases they analyze and by people from a distance that have only a partial knowledge of the whole situation.