Scientific misconduct

The term Scientific misconduct usually refers to fabricating, falsifying, plagiarizing or stealing scientific data and results. Fraud and dishonesty in research involves deliberately misrepresenting the research process, and includes:

• fabrication of data

• theft or plagiarism of data, ideas or methods, from another researcher

• misrepresentation of the research process for example by incorrect use of methodology, dishonest inclusion or exclusion of data, deceptive analysis of data to misrepresent their interpretation, or dishonesty toward granting authorities

• Breaches of ethical guidelines with respect to the use of animals in research, or to the use of humans as experimental subjects, or to the use of data obtained from patients without full informed consent.

It is commonly accepted that scientists are obliged to keep full and clear records of all of their experiments, and must retain these for inspection in the event of any challenge to reported findings. For example, according to the Society for Neuroscience Policy on Ethics [1] "The retention of accurately recorded and retrievable results is essential for the progress of scientific inquiry. Moreover, errors may be mistaken for misconduct when primary results are unavailable. Primary data should remain in the laboratory and should be preserved as long as there may be a reasonable need to refer to them."

References

• Committee on Publication Ethics
• CODEX Professional ethics: research misconduct
• Research Integrity and Publication Ethics Science Editor 25 159
• Constance Holden C (2002) Planned Misconduct Surveys Meet Stiff Resistance. Science 298 1549 DOI: 10.1126/science.298.5598.1549[2]
• Editorial (2006) Ethics and fraud. Nature 439: 117-118 doi:10.1038/439117a

[3]

• Gunsulus CK (2001) Research misconduct, Selected bibliography
• White C (1998) Call for research misconduct agency BMJ 316:1695 [4]