Research misconduct an introduction

Misconducts in research: An
introduction
“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right
thing to do. The hard part is doing it.” – General Norman
Schwarzkopfdf

Definition
• Behavior by a researcher, intentional or not, that falls short of good ethical
and scientific standards
• Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in
proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research
results.
 Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.
 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.
 Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or
words without giving appropriate credit.
 Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion."

The idea that the same experiments always get the same results, no matter
who performs them, is one of the cornerstones of science’s claim to
objective truth.
If a systematic campaign of replication does not lead to the same results,
then either the original research is flawed or the replications are………

• Over the past few years various researchers have made systematic attempts
to replicate some of the more widely cited priming experiments. Many of
these replications have failed.
• There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published,
written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to
think
• The results in a scientific paper are not supposed to be the reflection of an
individual scientist’s unique, personal views; they are supposed to be a
general claim about how the world works — one that can be verified by
others.
• There is some evidence that the retraction rate of scientific papers is on the
rise, but retracted papers are only a minuscule fraction of all published
research.

Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To
an alarming degree, it is not….
• Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things
wrong.
• But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over
time as other scientists try to take the work further.
• Scientists divide errors into two classes. A type I error is the mistake
of thinking something is true when it is not ( “false positive”). A type
II error is thinking something is not true when in fact it is ( “false
negative”)

Continued…
• When testing a specific hypothesis, scientists run statistical checks to
work out how likely it would be for data which seem to support the
idea to have come about simply by chance. If the likelihood of such a
false-positive conclusion is less than 5%, they deem the evidence that
the hypothesis is true “statistically significant”.
• In other words, they are thus accepting that one result in 20 will be
falsely positive

Research integrity:
Common Principals of Research Integrity:
• Honesty in all aspects of research
• Accountability in the conduct of research
• Professional courtesy and fairness in
working with others
• Good stewardship of research on behalf
of others

• John Bohannon, a biologist at Harvard, recently submitted a pseudonymous
paper on the effects of a chemical derived from lichen on cancer cells to 304
journals describing themselves as using peer review. An unusual move; but it was
an unusual paper, concocted wholesale and stuffed with clangers in study design,
analysis and interpretation of results. Receiving this dog’s dinner from a fictitious
researcher at a made up university, 157 of the journals accepted it for publication.
• In a classic 1998 study Fiona Godlee, editor of the prestigious British Medical
Journal, sent an article containing eight deliberate mistakes in study design,
analysis and interpretation to more than 200 of the BMJ’s regular reviewers. Not
one picked out all the mistakes. On average, they reported fewer than two; some
did not spot any.

Negativity around the negatives
• Ignoring the vast information source that is negative results is
troublesome in several ways.
• Firstly, it skews the scientific literature by only including chosen pieces of
information.
• Secondly, it causes a huge waste of time and resources, as other scientists
considering the same questions may perform the same experiments.
• Furthermore, given that positive results are published, whereas
negative data will struggle, it is extremely difficult to correct the
scientific record for false positives; controversial studies that conflict
with or cannot reproduce previously published studies are seldom
given space in peer-reviewed journals.

• Sometimes the argument is given
that negative data “cannot be
trusted”. But as was pointed out in
the 2013 article “Trouble at the
Lab” in The Economist, negative
data are statistically more
trustworthy than positive data.
• Science is, by its nature, a
collaborative discipline, and one of
the principal reasons why we should
report negative results is so our
colleagues do not waste their time
and resources repeating our findings

Conclusion
• Misconduct is an alarming and growing up phenomena, it occurs both
intentionally and unintentionally
• Unlimited negative effect can be produced through it
• The direction of scientific research should not be determined by the
pressure to win the ‘significance lottery’, but rather systematic,
hypothesis-driven attempts to fill holes in our knowledge. At the core,
it is our duty as scientists to both:
(1) publish all data, no matter what the outcome, because a negative finding is
still an important finding; and
(2) have a hypothesis to explain the finding

Recommendations
• Promoting culture of integrity,
• Prevention through training ,
• Developing Policies and guidelines,
• Preliminary assessment; correction ; Inquiry; investigation; punishment,
• Ethical standards need to be made clear so that researchers can determine
whether their work breaches certain codes
• Alleviation of pressure on researchers,
• Greater control of research sponsored by outside organizations
• Investigation into research irregularities must be fair, prompt, transparent,
and allow for retractions to be made promptly once evidence of misconduct
has been confirmed

Continued…
• Educating on what constitutes research misconduct, and the
seriousness of its repercussions
• Educating potential researchers at an early stage (e.g. at medical
school) on the mechanics of research ethics is essential to finding a
solution to this problem and ensuring careers are constructed on
honesty and integrity

Research misconduct an introduction

(http://www.indiana.edu/~poynter/)

Progress of science is built on trust.
Jean Shepherd, “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data.”

Public and private efforts to make published
research more reproducible
“Science can only self-correct if there is awareness of what needs correcting.”
• A privately organized consortium called the “Reproducibility Initiative” hopes to get scientists to
prioritize reproducibility in their work by offering what is essentially a seal of quality assurance. A
related effort is the “Reproducibility Project,” a large collaborative project which aims to
replicate key results from a set of highly cited recent papers in cancer biology and psychology.
• The NIH is also planning “significant interventions” to ensure that we can trust the results that are
published.
• New Negatives in Plant Science – a pilot journal: It is an open access journal that publishes both
research articles and commentaries.
• In recent years, open-access and broad-scope journals such as PLOS One, Frontiers and
the Biomed Central journal series are increasingly publishing papers with negative findings.
• Additionally, a number of journals have surfaced whose primary objective is to disseminate
negative findings, such as Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, Journal of
Negative Results in Biomedicine and The All Results Journal.

Likelihood of results to be true:
1. The smaller the studies conducted in a scientific field, the less likely the research
findings are to be true
2. The smaller the effect sizes in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are
to be true
3. The greater the number and the lesser the selection of tested relationships in a scientific
field, the less likely the research findings are to be true
4. The greater the flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes in a
scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true
5. The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less
likely the research findings are to be true
6. The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the
research findings are to be true
(Ref- http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

Research misconduct an introduction

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Research misconduct an introduction