Response—Corruption, Trust, and Professional Regulation

In their 2018 article in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Little, Lipworth, and Kerridge unpack the concept of corruption and clarify the mechanisms that foster corruption and allow it to persist, noting that organizations are “corruptogenic.” To address the “so-what” question, I draw on research about trust and trustworthiness, emphasizing that a person’s well-being and sense of security require trust to be present at both the individual and organizational levels—which is not possible in an environment where corruption and misconduct prevail. I highlight similarities in Little et al.’s framing of corruption to the persistent problem of scientific misconduct in research and publishing. I acknowledge the challenges in stemming corruption in science and medicine and conclude with a discussion about the need to reinvigorate a web of stakeholders to actively engage in professional regulation.

Detecting fabrication in large-scale molecular omics data

Fraud is a pervasive problem and can occur as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or theft. The scientific community is not exempt from this universal problem and several studies have recently been caught manipulating or fabricating data. Current measures to prevent and deter scientific misconduct come in the form of the peer-review process and on-site clinical trial auditors. As recent advances in high-throughput omics technologies have moved biology into the realm of big-data, fraud detection methods must be updated for sophisticated computational fraud. In the financial sector, machine learning and digit-frequencies are successfully used to detect fraud. Drawing from these sources, we develop methods of fabrication detection in biomedical research and show that machine learning can be used to detect fraud in large-scale omic experiments. Using the gene copy-number data as input, machine learning models correctly predicted fraud with 58–100% accuracy. With digit frequency as input features, the models detected fraud with 82%-100% accuracy. All of the data and analysis scripts used in this project are available at https://github.com/MSBradshaw/FakeData.

Reflexive Behaviour: How Publication Pressure Affects Research Quality in Astronomy

Reflexive metrics is a branch of science studies that explores how the demand for accountability and performance measurement in science has shaped the research culture in recent decades. Hypercompetition and publication pressure are part of this neoliberal culture. How do scientists respond to these pressures? Studies on research integrity and organisational culture suggest that people who feel treated unfairly by their institution are more likely to engage in deviant behaviour, such as scientific misconduct. By building up on reflexive metrics, combined with studies on the influence of organisational culture on research integrity, this study reflects on the research behaviour of astronomers with the following questions: (1) To what extent is research (mis-)behaviour reflexive, i.e., dependent on perceptions of publication pressure and distributive and organisational justice? (2) What impact does scientific misconduct have on research quality? In order to perform this reflection, we conducted a comprehensive survey of academic and non-academic astronomers worldwide and received 3509 responses. We found that publication pressure explains 10% of the variance in occurrence of misconduct and between 7% and 13% of the variance of the perception of distributive and organisational justice as well as overcommitment to work. Our results on the perceived impact of scientific misconduct on research quality show that the epistemic harm of questionable research practices should not be underestimated. This suggests there is a need for a policy change. In particular, lesser attention to metrics (such as publication rate) in the allocation of grants, telescope time and institutional rewards would foster better scientific conduct and, hence, research quality.

Philosophy of Scientific Malpractice

This paper presents current work in philosophy of science in practice that focusses on practices that are detrimental to the production of scientific knowledge. The paper argues that philosophy of scientific malpractice both provides an epistemological complement to research ethics in understanding scientific misconduct and questionable research practices, and provides a new approach to how training in responsible conduct of research can be implemented.

Research and publication ethics in developing countries

The scientific validity of any project relies heavily on the ethically conducted and published research work. Conducting good quality research and publishing it in a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal is the ultimate dream of any researcher. However if not done without any research and publication ethics, the work will be counterproductive. Fortunately, there are several publications on ethics of research and publication guiding an early-stage researcher to follow the underlying principles. Research ethics include upholding the basic ethical principles of human research, namely, respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Publication ethics involve not committing scientific misconduct, resolving authorship disputes, and avoiding simultaneous submission and duplicate publication. Repercussions of unethical research and publications are often unforgiving. Researchers in developing countries face unique challenges in this regard. However, at no cost should these principles be ignored. This will promote the development of a healthy research and publication culture, so desperately needed in these populations. Researchers, sponsors, ethical boards, publishers, and editors should work hand-in-hand to safeguard the research and publication integrity. In this review, issues surrounding research and publication ethics relevant to developing countries will be discussed.

Nine Ways to Detect Possible Scientific Misconduct in Research with Small (N < 200) Samples

Some scientists have fabricated their data, yet have published their fake results in peer-reviewed journals. How can we detect patterns typical of fabricated research? Nine relatively less complex ways for detecting potentially fabricated data in small samples (N < 200), are presented, using data from articles published since 1999 as illustrations. Even with smaller samples, there are several ways in which scholars, as well as their undergraduate and graduate students, can detect possible fabrication of data as well as other questionable research practices (QRPs). However, with larger samples, other techniques may be needed.

Assessing research misconduct in Iran: a perspective from Iranian medical faculty members

Background Research misconduct is a global concern in biomedical science. There are no comprehensive data regarding the perception and situation of scientific misconduct among the Iranian medical faculty members. We conducted a nationwide survey to assess the research misconduct among the medical faculty members in Iran. Methods We used the Persian version of the research misconduct questionnaire (PRMQ) on the Google Forms platform. We sent the survey link to a systematic random sample of medical faculty members in Iran (N = 4986). Descriptive analyses were performed on the individual items of the PRMQ, with frequencies and percentages for categorical and Likert-type response items, and means and standard deviation (S.D.) for continuous variables. Chi-square analysis was conducted to test hypotheses examining differences in the frequency of responses related to factors influencing misconduct. We also defined four tenure categories (TC) based on the working years of the participants as tenured faculty members. All the analyses were performed using R 3.6.0. Results The response rate was 13.8% (692 responses). Nearly 70% of the respondents agreed that their publication output would be of higher quality if there were no publication pressure. Approximately three-quarters (N =499, 72.1%) of the respondents had been aware of some instances of research misconduct during the previous year according to their understanding of misconduct. Among the participants, 18.5% perceived the effectiveness of their associated organisation’s rules for reducing research misconduct to be high or very high. Pressure for tenure was identified as the item most frequently perceived with a strong behavioural influence on engaging in research misconduct (80.2%). Conclusions This study confirms that research misconduct needs to be actively addressed among the medical faculty members. Making policies with a focus on boosting awareness regarding the occasions of scientific misconduct and its management seems to be indispensable in the future in Iran.

Utopijny uniwersytet dla realistów

It is known that parametric measures such as the Journal Index Factor or Hirsh Index provoke negative consequences in academic communities, significantly lowering job satisfaction and quality. A "game with algorithms" replaces researchers and academic teacher ethos, frequently leading to frustration and scientific misconduct. This situation is analyzed and compared with similar phenomena in business caused by so-called "motivations systems" colloquially called "stick and carrot." Since about 1980, several experts in management like E. Demming, A. Kohn, P. Senge, or M. Kossewski, point out a highly destructive role of these methods. Also, more and more organizations implement new management styles known as well-being, holacracy, participatory management, or teal self-organization. The main message of the paper is that it is worth considering similar approaches in academic communities. The author hopes that his voice will at least provoke a discussion on that matter.