Scientific Misconduct in Research

Transcription

1 Scientific Misconduct in Research Introduction In this assay I will describe and discuss different ethical aspects of scientific misconduct. In the first few paragraphs I will describe and give examples of the different types of misconduct: falsification, fabrication, plagiarism. I will then go on to discuss reasons driving scientists to misconduct and the effect it has, both within the scientific community and in the entire society. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI), an American organisation that investigates allegations of scientific misconduct, defines research misconduct like this: Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research result (1). Consequently, misconduct can be conducted in all parts of the research process, from the grant proposal to the final publication of the results and everything in between. An important detail to consider is that honest mistakes or differences of opinions are not included in the definition of misconduct, it only includes deliberate cheating in different ways (1). There is a grey zone between a mistake and obvious cheating that is often referred to as para-fraud, and in those cases it is hard to determine if the scientist cheated deliberately, or if mistakes happened due to incompetence. Either way, it is not something you want to be associated with. However, para-fraud is not normally considered a type of misconduct and I will not discuss it further, but instead focus of the so-called FFP: falsification, fabrication and plagiarism. Falsification Falsification is the most common form of scientific misconduct, in a study from % of the investigated misconduct cases were falsifications (2). It is defined by ORI as Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record. Consequently, falsification involves making changes for example in the set up or results of an experiment in a way that cannot be scientifically justified, most commonly with the intention of improving the results and/or removing result that do not fit the hypothesis. A common example is image manipulation, which depending on what has been done can be either falsification or fabrication. For example, if a researcher had a picture of a Western blot with a lot of background staining which obscured the band he was interested in, it would be considered falsification if he enhanced the band and meanwhile removed all the background staining without explicitly stating what he did. Several organisations, including the ORI, are currently

2 working together with scientific journals to improve methods of finding images that have been manipulated in order to find researchers who falsify their papers. This software can for example find if the brightness has been altered in different areas of an image and find if two images have the same origin (3). Fabrication The definition of fabrication set by the ORI is: Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them (1). The difference between falsification and fabrication lies mainly in that falsification something, like results, has been changed, whereas fabricated results have been invented. According to a study from 2004, fabrication is the second most common form of scientific misconduct, comprising 22% of the studied cases, plus 27% of the cases, labelled fabrication/falsification (2). A wellknown case is that of the physicist Jan Hendrik Schön who during a part of his career published a paper every eight days, something that seems impossible, but considering that he was caught fabricating and falsifying many of his papers, maybe not so impossible. The thing that brought him down, after receiving several prestigious prizes, was a graph that other scientists noticed was identical in three papers that were unrelated to each other, an almost certain sign that the research data had been fabricated, as one would not expect the same background noise in several experiments. An investigation started, during which numerous cases of scientific misconduct were found, including falsification, fabrication and destruction of data. Consequently, papers were retracted and Schön lost his job (4). Plagiarism Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. Plagiarism is the most common form of misconduct in education (5), but it is by far the least common in research making up just 1% of the misconduct cases presented in (2). But to make things more complicated: in another survey 32% of the respondents had suspected a colleague of plagiarism (6). Plagiarism is, perhaps incorrectly, not viewed as an equally serious offence as falsification and fabrication and is in some cases, like in the Methods part of a paper, even somewhat accepted (5), which may explain the differing results above. A recent case involving plagiarism comes from the Faculty of Law at the University where a teacher was caught and admitted to plagiarising several papers. The teacher had for example copied text from Wikipedia, a blog and from papers that one of the students at the faculty had written (7).

3 Why do scientists cheat? One of the foundations of scientific research is that researchers share their results with each other in order to collectively advance the knowledge within a specific research field, and in extension, bring benefits to society. However, when a researcher commits scientific misconduct it makes the scientific progress take a step backwards. Falsified and fabricated papers have often very compelling results, and are often highly cited. This can lead to other research groups wanting to have a piece of the pie, since being the first to find something is extremely important in the scientific community. And then, at some point in time, the paper is retracted and the foundation for a lot of research is removed, meaning that both time and money has been spent pursuing something without a sound scientific basis. What, then, drives researchers to perform misconduct? The teacher at the Faculty of Law who plagiarised texts for his own papers claimed that he was just too busy and that he had to plagiarise in order to finish all his work on time (7). This seems to be one group of researchers that perform misconduct, the ones that have too much to do, so they cheat to keep up appearances and further their careers. This is echoed in a paper where Mark Davis, a professor at The Ohio State University is interviewed: Telling a scientist at Harvard [University] or [the University of California in] Berkeley not to take on more than they can handle because the stress might cause them to commit misconduct isn't going to be very helpful if they are part of a culture where the rewards go to those who are busiest and who work the hardest (8). I think this really sums up a big challenge within research: that productivity is all, and showing that you are a good scientist is measured in the amount of publications you have, not the quality of them, or any other work you do, like teaching. And in order to publish a lot of papers you have to work a lot, being increasingly stressed, which obviously increases the temptation to falsify, fabricate or plagiarise a paper. Another group of scientist who perform misconduct in their research are the ones that seem to want to gain some kind of personal fame, exemplified by Paolo Macchiarini, previously active at Karolinska Institutet, who seemed to have a lack of all sorts of research ethics in his work with transplantations. Societal effects of scientific misconduct Scientific misconduct may to some seem like something that only concerns those working in science, but one of the goals in science is to improve society, for example by finding new medicines and treatments. But in most cases the public is not aware of cases of scientific misconduct, as universities often do not want to draw attention to the fact that someone working there has been cheating, and instead handles the matter internally, to the point that hardly anyone ever hears of it (8). However, in order to

4 improve something, you have to discuss it, and in several cases when misconduct has been made very public, changes have been made. One example in the legislation and guidelines about informed consent. They were created after the Nuremberg trials, when the horrific tests Nazi scientist were performing on people who had not given their consent, came to light (5). But one of the most important results following when scientific misconduct has reached the public and the media is, I think: can scientists be trusted? Scientists are generally people who are well trusted by the general public, but every time there is a big scandal, it is harder to believe that not all scientists cheat, but they are just not caught. The consequences of this could include many things, like people not believing scientific results anymore, instead seeking alternative treatments for illnesses from people without any medical training on blogs, rather than listening to their doctors. It could also decrease peoples willingness to be included in clinical trials for new drugs or treatments, despite the fact that they could benefit from it. Summary This paper has been about scientific misconduct in research. I have presented the different kinds of misconduct, given examples and discussed each type of misconduct. I also discussed reasons behind, and the societal effects of scientific misconduct. This is an important part of research ethics and an important part of all junior scientists education. References (1) ORI, Accessed (2) A.E Shamoo, Responsible Conduct of Research, Ch 8: Misconduct in Research p.27. (3) A. Newman, The art of detecting data and image manipulation, 4/ , accessed (4) G. Brumfiel, Physicist found guilty of misconduct, 26/9 2002, accessed (5) J. Josefsson, Bioethics and Research Ethics: Introduction, (6) A.E Shamoo, Responsible Conduct of Research, Ch 8: Misconduct in Research p.18. (7) K. Kniivilä, Juridiklärare åkte fast för fusk, Accessed

5 (8) J. Mervis, After the Fall, Science, 28/ Accessed