SCIENTIFIC
MISCONDUCT

One of the most important research ethical issues that should be taken into consideration is “scientific misconduct” such as fabrication, falsification and questionable research practices. This type of misconduct emerges as an inevitable consequence caused by the crisis of trust in science, where researchers struggle to orientate in the wild west of scholarly literature. Instead of fighting against the global misinformation, research scientists are occupied with their own little universe and all too concerned about research funds and securing a future career. Although sad, this malaise is in some way understandable.

WHY

The diagnosis, which we might call the businessification of science and the money imbalance. How can we differentiate between the two proposed diagnoses: The money imbalance implies that a decrease in funds has caused the malaise precisely because the biomedical research ecosystem is organized according to traditional rules. Businessification implies the opposite: that the malaise resulted from deliberately abolishing the traditional rules of basic science and replacing them with the rules of business, thus making the system less robust and the methods and conduction less empirical. The incentive of obtaining more grants, reputation or a tenured position provokes publication bias.

Publication bias, the phenomenon in which studies with positive results are more likely to be published than studies with negative results, is a serious problem in the interpretation of scientific research. Various hypothetical models have been studied which clarify the potential for bias and highlight characteristics which make a study especially susceptible to bias.

There are numerous biases in medical research that render evidence from such research systematically misleading. Some of these biases are exacerbated by conflicts of interest, including fantastic financial incentives. The most important biases in medical research include confirmation bias, design bias, analysis bias, and publication bias. Arguably, some forms of bias, such as publication bias, should be considered as scientific fraud or misconduct.

Publication bias, the phenomenon in which studies with positive results are more likely to be published than studies with negative results, is a serious problem in the interpretation of scientific research. Various hypothetical models have been studied which clarify the potential for bias and highlight characteristics which make a study especially susceptible to bias.

There are numerous biases in medical research that render evidence from such research systematically misleading. Some of these biases are exacerbated by conflicts of interest, including fantastic financial incentives. The most important biases in medical research include confirmation bias, design bias, analysis bias, and publication bias. Arguably, some forms of bias, such as publication bias, should be considered as scientific fraud or misconduct.

Fabrication is making up data or results, and recording or reporting them.

The fabrication of research data ... hits at the heart of our responsibility to society, the reputation of our institution, the trust between the public and the biomedical research community, and personal credibility and that of our scientific workforce, institutions and research practices...

The frequency with which scientists fabricate and falsify data, or commit other forms of scientific misconduct is a matter of controversy. Many surveys have asked scientists directly whether they have committed or know of a colleague who committed research misconduct, but their results appeared difficult to compare and synthesize.

A popular view propagated by the media and by many scientists sees fraudsters as just a ‘‘few bad apples’’. This pristine image of science is based on the theory that the scientific community is guided by norms including disinterestedness and organized scepticism, which are incompatible with misconduct. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that known frauds are just the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’, and that many cases are never discovered.

A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In contrast, 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%).

Behavior that would be considered scientific misconduct could occur at all points in a research protocol. You could encounter different types of scientific misconduct at different stages, right from the origination of the research study itself to the publication of the results.

Scientific Misconduct is the first part of a visual research project from Burak Korkmaz in the framework of
BIO 26| Biennial of Design Ljubljana: Associated Projects.

This project aims to tackle recent challenges of biomedical science research that is immensely affected by a variety of dis- and misinformation flood, rise of new technologies, dissemination and application of rules and dynamics of attention economy.
It sheds light upon the actual situation and abundant evidence of all sides of sources and effects of scientific fraud.

Visit the exhibition, if this is of interest to you
14 November 2019 - 9 February 2020
Ajdovščina Underpass, Ljubljana, Slovenia

https://bio.si/en/program/exhibitions/9/scientific-misconduct-who-cures-cancer-in-photoshop/