Reports Of Fraud Research Articles

Uncertain News

Trust influences a range of human behaviors including health decision making. Over the past 60 years a significant industry has sprung up to influence public opinion and mobilize grassroots challenges against evidence-based threats to vested interests. Simultaneously, media reports of scientific fraud, misrepresentation, constantly changing “evidence” for health, and “hyped” predictions of disasters that were ultimately less significant amplify doubts about the reliability of scientific evidence and technology when hazards arise. This has contributed to the appearance of decay of trust in the veracity of scientific claims. Population responses during communicable disease epidemics illustrate these interacting processes that simultaneously create uncertainty and significant discomfort within communities. Research on the relative influences of formal versus informal information sources in driving protective behavior during recent influenza epidemics shows how both the uptake of everyday preventive practices such as hand hygiene, and specific health interventions, such as vaccination are affected by these processes. We review recent work on influenza-related personal preventive practices, with a particular focus on the shifting roles and utility of formal and informal sources in decision making among the public, and consider the implications within the context of prevailing levels of trust, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding health care recommendations.

Moral violations reduce oral consumption

Consumers frequently encounter moral violations in everyday life. They watch movies and television shows about crime and deception, hear news reports of corporate fraud and tax evasion, and hear gossip about cheaters and thieves. How does exposure to moral violations influence consumption? Because moral violations arouse disgust and because disgust is an evolutionarily important signal of contamination that should provoke a multi-modal response, we hypothesize that moral violations affect a key behavioral response to disgust: reduced oral consumption. In three experiments, compared with those in control conditions, people drank less water and chocolate milk while (a) watching a film portraying the moral violations of incest, (b) writing about moral violations of cheating or theft, and (c) listening to a report about fraud and manipulation. These findings imply that “moral disgust” influences consumption in ways similar to core disgust, and thus provide evidence for the associations between moral violations, emotions, and consumer behavior.

"Administrative disaster"About the fraud report of the Yanba dam verification by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport river section

"Administrative disaster"About the fraud report of the Yanba dam verification by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport river section

Probabilistic Evaluation of SMS Messages as Forensic Evidence

This study is one of the first likelihood ratio-based forensic text comparison studies in forensic authorship analysis. The likelihood-ratio-based evaluation of scientific evidence has started being adopted in many disciplines of forensic evidence comparison sciences, such as DNA, handwriting, fingerprints, footwear, voice recording, etc., and it is largely accepted that this is the way to ensure the maximum accountability and transparency of the process. Due to its convenience and low cost, short message service (SMS) has been a very popular medium of communication for quite some time. Unfortunately, however, SMS messages are sometimes used for reprehensible purposes, e.g., communication between drug dealers and buyers, or in illicit acts such as extortion, fraud, scams, hoaxes, and false reports of terrorist threats. In this study, the author performs a likelihood-ratio-based forensic text comparison of SMS messages focusing on lexical features. The likelihood ratios (LRs) are calculated in Aitken and Lucy’s (2004) multivariate kernel density procedure, and are calibrated. The validity of the system is assessed based on the magnitude of the LRs using the log-likelihood-ratio cost (Cllr). The strength of the derived LRs is graphically presented in Tippett plots. The results of the current study are compared with those of previous studies.

Development and Application of a Database of Food Ingredient Fraud and Economically Motivated Adulteration from 1980 to 2010

Food ingredient fraud and economically motivated adulteration are emerging risks, but a comprehensive compilation of information about known problematic ingredients and detection methods does not currently exist. The objectives of this research were to collect such information from publicly available articles in scholarly journals and general media, organize into a database, and review and analyze the data to identify trends. The results summarized are a database that will be published in the US Pharmacopeial Convention's Food Chemicals Codex, 8th edition, and includes 1305 records, including 1000 records with analytical methods collected from 677 references. Olive oil, milk, honey, and saffron were the most common targets for adulteration reported in scholarly journals, and potentially harmful issues identified include spices diluted with lead chromate and lead tetraoxide, substitution of Chinese star anise with toxic Japanese star anise, and melamine adulteration of high protein content foods. High-performance liquid chromatography and infrared spectroscopy were the most common analytical detection procedures, and chemometrics data analysis was used in a large number of reports. Future expansion of this database will include additional publically available articles published before 1980 and in other languages, as well as data outside the public domain. The authors recommend in-depth analyses of individual incidents. This report describes the development and application of a database of food ingredient fraud issues from publicly available references. The database provides baseline information and data useful to governments, agencies, and individual companies assessing the risks of specific products produced in specific regions as well as products distributed and sold in other regions. In addition, the report describes current analytical technologies for detecting food fraud and identifies trends and developments.

The Influence of Interactivity on E-service Offerings: An Empirical Examination of Benefits and Risks

News reports of Internet-based security breaches, identity theft, fraud, and other dangers may increase the perceived risk and decrease the perceived benefits of using electronic services (or e-services). We examine whether interactivity serves as a means to diminish the perceived risks and increase the perceived benefits of using e-services. To examine interactivity’s influence on consumers’ perceptions, we conducted a laboratory experiment using a simulated web-based, online payment system. When compared to a non-interactive preview of an online payment system, we found that consumers who used an interactive e-service simulation reported higher perceived involvement and authenticity as well as higher intangibility and risks of e-services. Further, we found that interactivity moderated relationships such that consumers were more likely to report higher intentions to use e-services. The paper concludes with implications for research and practice.

A Tale of Two Perspectives: Regulation Versus Self-Regulation. A Financial Reporting Approach (from Sarbanes–Oxley) for Research Ethics

Reports of research fraud have raised concerns about research integrity similar to concerns raised about financial accounting fraud. We propose a departure from self-regulation in that researchers adopt the financial accounting approach in establishing trust through an external validation process, in addition to the reporting entities and the regulatory agencies. The general conceptual framework for reviewing financial reports, utilizes external auditors who are certified and objective in using established standards to provide an opinion on the financial reports. These standards have become both broader in scope and increasingly specific as to what information is reported and the methodologies to be employed. We believe that the financial reporting overhaul encompassed in the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which aims at preventing accounting fraud, can be applied to scientific research in 4 ways. First, Sarbanes-Oxley requires corporations to have a complete set of internal accounting controls. Research organizations should use appropriate sampling techniques and audit research projects for conformity with the initial research protocols. Second, corporations are required to have the chief financial officer certify the accuracy of their financial statements. In a similar way, each research organization should have their vice-president of research (or equivalent) certify the research integrity of their research activities. In contrast, the primary responsibility of the existing Research Integrity Officers is to handle allegations of research misconduct, an after-the-fact activity. Third, generally accepted auditing standards specify the appropriate procedures for external review of a corporation's financial statements. For similar reasons, the research review process would also require corresponding external auditing standards. Finally, these new requirements would be implemented in stages, with the largest 14 research organizations that receive 25% of the total National Institutes of Health funding, adopting these research oversight enhancements first.

Fraud 2009 bad, 2010 better?

2009 was a year where fraud was rarely out of the headlines. To date there have been an astonishing 292 799 reports of fraud in the global media during 2009. The biggest fraud ever – involving Bernard Madoff and $65 billion – reached court and, in the midst of a recession, almost every area of the economy showed major increases in fraud. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that fraud was a major cause of the recession, with the widespread sale of financial securities based on sub-prime mortgages, which were known to be worthless.

Web mining technologies for customer and marketing surveys

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to illustrate the usefulness and results of applying web mining as extensions of data mining.Design/methodology/approachWeb mining is performed using three selected software to databases related to customer survey, marketing campaign data, and web site usage. The three selected software are PolyAnalyst®of Megaputer Intelligence, Inc., SPSS Clementine®, and ClickTracks by Web Analytics.FindingsThis paper discusses and compares the web mining technologies used by the selected software as applied to text, web, and click stream data.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations include the availability of databases and software to perform the web mining. The implications include that this methodology can be extended to other databases.Practical implicationsThe methodology used in this paper could be representative of that used for managers to manage their relationships with customers, their marketing campaigns, and their web site activities.Originality/valuePolyAnalyst is applied to analyze text data of actual written hotel comments. SPSS Clementine is applied to customer web data collected in response to several different marketing campaigns, including age, gender, and income. ClickTracks is applied to click‐stream data for Bob's Fruit web site to generate click fraud report, search report with revenues, pay‐per‐click, and search keywords for all visitors.

UK shadow home secretary victim of online card fraud

A new UK e-crime unit will sit within the National Fraud Reporting Centre (NFRC), a Home Office minister has announced. It will be the second dedicated unit to tackle cybercrime, coming two years after the National High Tech Crime Unit was amalgamated into the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. Home Office minister, Vernon Coaker, told a House of Lords Science & Technology Meeting that the Home Office would fund the unit. It will be the law enforcement arm of the NFRC, but will still investigate non-fraud related crimes. The move is a signal that the Labour Government is starting to put cybercrime on the agenda – a cause, which the opposing Conservative party has also been backing recently. Philip Hunter looks at cybercrime politics in the UK.

UK. Counter fraud report

UK. Counter fraud report

The Security of the FBI, a Fraud Report and InfoSec Consulting

In this column, we will take a somewhat different approach from previous columns. Instead of dealing with one issue, we’ll discuss several. If you prefer this approach, let us know. If you prefer the other, let us know. If you don’t care either way, let us know. If we don’t hear from you, I will take that as an overwhelming approval from you, our favourite customers, that you think I should do it the way I want to do it.

Ethical Values in the Education of Biomedical Researchers

Research is relatively new activity for physicians--scientific medicine and the culture of research that supports it date from only the beginning of this century. Whereas Western physicians have discussed ethical values in patient care for over 2,000 years, true discourse on the ethics of biomedical research has developed only in the last few decades. Instruction in the ethics of biomedical research has become part of the professional development of young doctors even more recently. While the history of ethical reflection on biomedical research has been short, scholarly and professional activity in the field has been intense. Unfortunately, contemporary attention to the ethics of research and the integrity of biomedical science has been prompted not by idealism but by public scandals over abuse of human and animal subjects, reports of scientific fraud, and public concern over an apparent lack of general ethical standards among biomedical scientists.[1] Professional discussion of the ethics of biomedical research has resulted largely from the need to identify, punish, and prevent wrongdoing among researchers. In most instances, this discussion has not meant the creation of new ethical norms, but rather the articulation of previously unwritten ethical standards that became evident only as they were violated. Integrity and ethical responsibility in biomedical research have received particularly serious attention in U.S. universities and medical institutions since 1989. That year the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued formal requirement that a program in the principles of scientific integrity be an integral part of the proposed research training of any institution that applies for National Research Service Award training grant, funds that support graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in biomedical research.[2] In the years since, administrators and faculty in medical universities have spent significant time and effort developing educational programs in research ethics for physicians in training and graduate students in the biomedical sciences. NIH's order was issued amid profound concern among senior medical researchers, science policy experts, and high-ranking members of government that the informal transmission of ethical norms from teacher to student was not enough in today's complex world of biomedical research. The growing emphasis on formal instruction in ethics is intended as corrective to the past generation's more exclusive concentration on trainees' technical skills and research productivity. By requiring young researchers to study ethics as an essential tool of their work--just as they might study statistics--NIH called for the ethical standards of biomedical science to be formalized, analyzed, and taught deliberately. In seeking to meet NIH's requirement, many schools have struggled to define essential professional values in research and determine what core curriculum expressing these values should contain. The ethic, al issues facing physician researchers are widely recognized: the humane and respectful use of human and animal subjects in research; the proper maintenance of data and records; conflicts of interest; self-deception and fraud; the definition of intellectual property in authorship, publishing, and patenting; and the scientist's relationship with peers, students, teachers, funders, and society at large. However, there is still work to be done in articulating the ground on which to address specific ethical problems in biomedical research as well as in devising effective methods for ethics instruction. The Source of Ethics in Scientific Research The first intellectual challenge in designing an educational program in the ethics of biomedical research is to define what is meant by ethics. Many courses in medical and research ethics begin with an overview of the fundamental theories and methods of philosophical ethics, which they later apply to the specific problems of the field. …

Auditing research studies.

Recognizing the increasing attention being given to reports of misconduct, fraud, and unethical behavior in biomedical research, it appears timely for nurse researchers to engage in an organized method of peer review. To describe an auditing process for funded research grants, the guidelines used to conduct the research audit, and the results to date. The audit encompassed National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded projects and their respective research teams, 12 faculty auditors using an audit worksheet developed by the Center for Nursing Research. Overall, auditing of research grants was viewed positively by both investigators and faculty auditors. Minor problems were identified that could be corrected. Only one grant required a second review. Specific guidelines are proposed for future audits that include level of funding and timing of audits.

Cresson Resigns in Wake of Fraud Report

The European Union's (EU's) embattled research commissioner, Edith Cresson, submitted her resignation this week along with the other 19 EU commissioners in the wake of a scathing report by a European Parliament investigative panel that alleged cronyism and mismanagement in the EU's executive body. The panel singled out Cresson for the harshest criticism. As Science went to press, it was not yet clear whether some commissioners—all of whom are political appointees—would be renamed to their positions by their respective governments, to serve out terms that had been scheduled to expire at the end of this year. However, two sources in Brussels said it was “highly unlikely” that the French government would restore Cresson to her post, and officials are beginning to speculate about her successor.

The Police and the People in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

In the summer of 1817 Mehmed 'All, Governor of Egypt for twelve years, appointed a new market inspector (muhtasib) for Cairo. Exasperated by repeated reports of irregularities and fraud in the markets of Cairo and frustrated by his previous muhtasib's inability to impose law and order he is reported to have said, have extended my authority to lands far and distant. I am feared by the bedouins, by highwaymen and by many others. Except by the rabble of Cairo; they are not deterred by my muhtasibs. They deserve to have a new muhtasib who will show them no mercy and give them no reprieve. Soon after his appointment, the new market inspector set out implementing his draconian measures that were intended to bring order to the loose markets of Cairo: a counterfeiter of currency was hanged from one of the old gates of medieval Cairo (Bab Zuwayla) with a coin hanging from his nose; butchers caught selling meat at prices higher than those set down by the Pasha's dfwan had their noses slit by the muhtasib himself; and kunafa merchants cheating in weight and prices were forced to sit on their hot pans while still on fire.1 This staging of spectacles of punishment to deter onlookers was not used only with the boisterous merchants of Cairo; the authorities had recourse to this kind of punishment in numerous other occasions and with different kinds of offenders. For example, in 1824 when Mehmed 'Ali started founding his new disciplined

Improving security

Reports on measures taken by the Benefits Agency to fight benefit fraud during 1993‐94. Categorizes fraud activity and reports on recent investigations. Describes the organization and specifies three ways of dealing with fraud: prevention, detection and deterrence. Outlines current and future plans.

Definitions and Boundaries of Research Misconduct

Introduction The definitions and boundaries of in and are important public policy issues. They are particularly important to scientists who may become the subject of allegations, to their colleagues or to the officials of their employing institutions who may have to deal with such allegations, and to the federal agencies that have established regulations requiring the investigation and reporting to the government of such matters as they may relate to applications and awards for fellowships, grants, and contracts for from federal The purpose of this article is to review and to contrast between two major federal agencies the development of the definition of misconduct. Background of Federal Definitions of Misconduct Early PHS/NIH Policy The United States Congress passed the Health Research Extension Act of 1985 (12), enacting Section 493 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act, which required institutions to review reports of scientific fraud and required the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish an administrative process to respond to such information and to recommend sanctions where appropriate (20). The PHS agencies had previously handled cases and imposed administrative actions (sanctions) based on the inherent authority of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to administer and protect effectively the integrity of PHS grant programs. This authority was publicly announced in 1982 when the HHS published a Privacy Act notice (3) that stated: Individuals who are recipients of, or candidates for, awards may be subjects of investigations or determinations of misconduct. Such might consist of falsification of data, misuse of public funds, or fraud. It might involve other violations or infractions of laws, regulations, or ethical standards, indicating that the individual does not fulfill the responsibilities and qualifications expected in the conduct of biomedical or the expenditure of public funds. As a first step toward formal regulations, interim PHS policies and procedures were published in 1986 in the NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts (23), with an initial definition of misconduct in science as (1) serious deviation, such as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, from accepted practices in carrying out or in reporting the results of research; or (2) material to comply with Federal requirements affecting specific aspects of the conduct of research, for example, the protection of human subjects and the welfare of laboratory animals. NSF's First Regulations During this same period, the National Science Foundation (NSF), a separate federal agency, developed and published in 1987 (13) a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which was followed by the establishment (14) of formal NSF regulations at 45 CFR Part 689. The NSF adopted a definition of misconduct in and engineering research that was similar to that in the 1986 NIH Guide, but NSF included an additional section: failure to meet other material legal requirements governing Under this definition, the NSF's Office of Inspector General (OIG) recommended in 1990, and the NSF deputy director proceeded with, a debarment for a case of involving sexual malfeasance/harassment by an investigator; this behavior was judged to be an integral part of his performance as the mentor of students involved in field on an NSF grant (15). A number of scientists and their professional associations publicly criticized this application of the definition of misconduct in science to include sexual harassment-related activities (26). The NSF OIG staff has recently defended this position (1). PHS Regulations Following the NSF's process, the PHS (4) also published an Advance NPRM (a preliminary public announcement) and then a Proposed Rule (an NPRM) in 1988, seeking public comment on a PHS definition of in including: (1) fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, deception or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research; or (2) material to comply with other requirements that are uniquely related to the conduct of research. …

Student Loan Program: Discontent, Confessions, Perspective, and Questions

Widespread concern and complaints have mounted about the cost to the federal government of the Stafford Loan program, and specifically on increasing costs of defaults and reports of fraud and abuse in the system. Policymakers are scurrying to enact change during this Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Indeed, change in the Higher Education Act is a long time coming. This article will explicate the nature of our discontent with the current state of affairs, offer institutional perspectives, raise questions and key principles in the hope that amidst a highly-charged political debate, reason and common sense can find a place.

Scientific Fraud and Misconduct Report Available

Scientific Fraud and Misconduct Report Available