The demand for science trainees to have appropriate responsible conduct of research instruction continues to increase the attention shown by federal agencies and graduate school programs to the development of effective ethics curriculums. However, it is important to consider that the main learning environment for science graduate students and post-doctoral research fellows is within a laboratory setting. Here we discuss an internal laboratory program of weekly 15-minute ethics discussions implemented and used over the last 3 years in addition to the (...) graduate school’s program of scientific integrity training. During this time, the environment and culture within our laboratory has changed to place greater emphasis on the ethical implications of our own research and the research we evaluate. We still struggle with how to accurately assess this behavioral change; although, we present preliminary survey results on the evaluation and impact of this style of curriculum for ethics instruction in our laboratory. (shrink)

Representations of science and technology, embodied as imaginaries, visions, and expectations, have become a growing focus of analysis. These representations are of interest to normative approaches to science and technology, such as Hermeneutic Technology Assessment and Responsible Innovation, because of their ability to modulate understandings of science and technology and to influence scientific and technological development. This article analyses the culture of participation underlying the NanoKOMIK project and the representations and meanings of (nano)science and (nano)technology communicated in the two nano-fiction (...) comic books created as part of the project: _Dayanne and Murillo. The power of nanoscience_ (2016) and _NanoKOMIK #2_ (2017). The article argues that despite NanoKOMIK’s efforts to engage the public with (nano)science and (nano)technology, it reproduces non-binding modes of public participation and transmits socio-technical meanings that are instrumental in the social legitimisation of (nano)technology. More specifically, the analysis shows that NanoKOMIK’s comic books, in addition to not problematising the risks and conveying an eminently positive view of nanotechnology, also communicate certain ‘myth-conceptions’ of scientific activity and its products. For example, they convey an individualistic and linear vision of research and innovation and an instrumentalist and neutral (or ‘value-free’) view of technology. These findings highlight the importance of critically analysing the ‘cultures of participation’ that characterise and reproduce ‘participatory’ or ‘collaborative’ projects and the representations of (nano)science and (nano)technology that they perpetuate. (shrink)

Research integrity is fundamental to the validity and reliability of scientific findings, and for ethical conduct of research. As part of PRINTEGER (Promoting Integrity as an Integral Dimension of Excellence in Research), this study explores the views of researchers, research managers, administrators, and governance advisors in Estonia, Italy, Norway and UK, focusing specifically on their understanding of institutional and organisational influences on research integrity.A total of 16 focus groups were conducted. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that competition is pervasive (...) and appeared in most themes relating to integrity. The structural frameworks for research such as funding, evaluation and publication were thought to both protect and, more commonly, undermine integrity. In addition, institutional systems, including workload and research governance, shaped participants’ day-to-day work environment, also affecting research integrity. Participants also provided ideas for promoting research integrity, including training, and creating conditions that would be supportive of research integrity.These findings support a shift away from individual blame and towards the need for structural and institutional changes, including organisations in the wider research environment, for example funding bodies and publishing companies. (shrink)

Researchers sometimes engage in various forms of dishonesty and unethical behavior, which has led to regulatory efforts to ensure that they work according to acceptable standards. Such regulation is a difficult task, as research is a diverse and dynamic endeavor. Researchers can disagree about what counts as good and acceptable standards, and these standards are constantly developing. This paper presents and discusses recent changes in research integrity and ethics regulation in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Recognizing that research norms are developed (...) through practice and are therefore unsuited for comprehensive national regulation, the Scandinavian countries focus on empowering the research community to regulate itself instead, except for the most severe cases of misconduct. This empowerment takes the form of giving research institutions tools and investigatory powers while also holding them responsible for ensuring that both the institution and individual researchers are up to date on relevant norms. In this way, the Scandinavian governments seek to avoid some of the challenges found in more legalistic approaches, which risk lagging behind the continuous development of research norms and can be insensitive to the fact that different disciplines have different norms. While the new approach in Scandinavian has several potential benefits, it also involves potential trade-offs and limitations. The new laws can create confusion about what researchers are allowed to do. Another issue is that it only addresses the fundamental drivers of misconduct to a limited extent. (shrink)

Research integrity climate is an important factor that influences an individual’s behavior. A strong research integrity culture can lead to better research practices and responsible conduct of research. Therefore, investigations on organizational climate can be a valuable tool to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each group and develop targeted initiatives. This study aims to assess the perceptions on integrity climate in three universities in Hungary. A cross-sectional study was conducted with PhD students, postdocs, and professors from three Hungarian universities. (...) The survey included demographic questions, such as gender, age, scientific field, academic rank, and the Survey of Organizational Research Climate. A total of 432 participants completed the survey. Our results show that postdocs and assistant professors perceived integrity climate more negatively than PhD students and full professors in every survey scale. Contrarily, PhD students perceive more positively than the other groups. Disciplinary differences show that researchers in the Biomedical sciences perceive regulatory bodies to be fairer when evaluating their projects than those in the Natural sciences. Natural sciences also perceive more negatively how the department values integrity when compared to Humanities. Humanities perceive more positively Advisor/Advisee Relations than Biomedical Sciences. Our results suggest that institutions should pay more attention to early career researchers, especially insecure and temporary positions like postdocs and assistant professors. They should provide RCR resources, socialize them in RCR, and set more reasonable expectations. Moreover, department leaders should develop initiatives to foster better integrity climates. (shrink)

The scientificity of the research should be evaluated according to the methodology used in the study. However, these are usually the research areas or the institutions that are classified as scientific or non-scientific. Because of various reasons, it may turn out that the scientific institutions are not producing science, while the “non-scientists” are doing real science. In the extreme case, the official science system is entirely corrupt, consisting of fraudsters, while the real scientists have been expelled from academic institutions. Since (...) 2016-2017, there has been much talk about the “post-truth era” and the politicians who are “denying science”. However, simultaneously, many complaints about the corruption of science appeared. The outsider cannot tell who is telling the truth as it may be the case that the science fraudsters are defending themselves and these politicians are aware of the corruption. It is also untrue that the censoring or suppression of science started from 2016-2017. Suppression of science because of political and ideological reasons was present already long ago, and during the last few years, it has been increasing. The picture is highly complicated as there are many pretenders, false accusations, etc. For example, because of political reasons, someone may be set up as a pseudoscientist, the real scientist may be expelled using political accusations, justified criticism may be labelled as political pressure, etc. There is something like an inner information war ongoing in and around science. The classical philosophy of science seems unable to handle it because every formal rule can be misapplied. Science, as a whole, may be unable to persist. (shrink)

Psychological science is maturing and therefore transitioning from explorative to theory-driven research. While explorative research seeks to find something “new,” theory-driven research seeks to elaborate on already known and hence predictable effects. A consequence of these differences is that the quality of explorative and theory-driven research needs to be judged by distinct criterions that optimally support their respective development. Especially, theory-driven research needs to be judged by its methodological rigor. A focus on innovativeness, which is typical for explorative research, will (...) instead incentivize bad research practices (e.g., imprecise theorizing, ignoring previous research, parallel theories). To support the advancement of psychology, we must drop the innovation requirement for theory-driven research and instead require the strongest methods, which are marked by high internal and external validity. Precise theorizing needs to substitute novelty. Theories are advanced by requiring explicit, testable assumptions, and an explicit preference for one theory over another. These explicit and potentially wrong assumptions should not be silenced within the peer-review process, but instead be scrutinized in new publications. Importantly, these changes in scientific conduct need to be supported by senior researchers, especially, in their roles as editors, reviewers, and in the hiring process. An important obstacle to further theory-driven research is to measure scientific merit using researchers’ number of publications, which favors theoretically shallow and imprecise writing. Additionally, it makes publications the central target of scientific misconduct even though they are the main source of information for the scientific community and the public. To advance the field, researchers should be judged by their contribution to the scientific community (e.g., exchange with and support of colleagues, and mentoring). Another step to advance psychology is to clearly differentiate between measurement model and theory, and not to overgeneralize based on few stimuli, incidences, or studies. We will use ideas from the theory of science to underline the changes necessary within the field of psychology to overcome this existential replication crisis. (shrink)

Empirical studies have revealed a disturbing prevalence of research misconduct in a wide variety of disciplines, although not, to date, in the areas of ethics and philosophy. This study aims to provide empirical evidence on perceptions of how serious a problem research misconduct is in these two disciplines in Spain, particularly regarding the effects that the model used to evaluate academics’ research performance may have on their ethical behaviour. The methodological triangulation applied in the study combines a questionnaire, a debate (...) at the annual meeting of scientific association, and in-depth interviews. Of the 541 questionnaires sent out, 201 responses were obtained, with a significant difference in the participation of researchers in philosophy and in ethics ; 26 researchers took part in the debate and 14 interviews were conducted. The questionnaire results reveal that 91.5% of the respondents considered research misconduct to be on the rise; 63.2% considered at least three of the fraudulent practices referred to in the study to be commonplace, and 84.1% identified two or more such practices. The researchers perceived a high prevalence of duplicate publication and self-plagiarism, use of personal influence and citation manipulation, in contrast to a low perceived incidence of data falsification or fabrication. The debate and the interviews corroborated these data. Researchers associated the spread of these misconducts with the research evaluation model applied in Spain. (shrink)

In the past two decades, individual explanations of scientific misconduct have increasingly given way to systemic explanations. Where did this interest in systemic factors come from? Given that research ethicists often present their interventions as responses to scientific misconduct, this article tests the hypothesis that these systemic explanations were triggered by high-visibility cases of scientific norm violation. It does so by examining why Dutch scientists in 2011 explained Diederik Stapel’s grand-scale data fabrication largely in systemic terms, whereas only fifteen years (...) earlier, in the René Diekstra affair, such explanations had been close to absent. Drawing on a wealth of historical sources, the article suggests that cases like Stapel’s as such do not explain why early 21st-century commentators exchanged individual explanations for systemic ones. Only against the background of an existing discourse of criticism of the science system, developed in the 1990s and 2000s in response to rapidly increasing competition for research funding, could the Stapel affair achieve notoriety as an example of how systemic factors provoke bad conduct. (shrink)

Philosophers of science and metascientists alike typically model scientists’ behavior as driven by credit maximization. In this article I argue that this modeling assumption cannot account for how scientists have a default level of trust in each other’s assertions. The normative implication of this is that science policy should not focus solely on incentive reform.

Some of the most significant policy responses to cases of fraudulent and questionable conduct by scientists have been to strengthen professionalism among scientists, whether by codes of conduct, integrity boards, or mandatory research integrity training programs. Yet there has been little systematic discussion about what professionalism in scientific research should mean. In this paper I draw on the sociology of the professions and on data comparing codes of conduct in science to those in the professions, in order to examine what (...) precisely the model of professionalism implies for scientific research. I argue that professionalism, more than any other single organizational logic, is appropriate for scientific research, and that codes of conduct for scientists should strengthen statements concerning scientific autonomy and competence, as well as the scientific service ideal. (shrink)

Scientific authorship serves to identify and acknowledge individuals who “contribute significantly” to published research. However, specific authorship norms and practices often differ within and across disciplines, labs, and cultures. As a consequence, authorship disagreements are commonplace in team research. This study aims to better understand the prevalence of authorship disagreements, those factors that may lead to disagreements, as well as the extent and nature of resulting misbehavior. Methods include an international online survey of researchers who had published from 2011 to (...) 2015. Of the 6673 who completed the main questions pertaining to authorship disagreement and misbehavior, nearly half reported disagreements regarding authorship naming; and discipline, rank, and gender had significant effects on disagreement rates. Paradoxically, researchers in multidisciplinary teams that typically reflect a range of norms and values, were less likely to have faced disagreements regarding authorship. Respondents reported having witnessed a wide range of misbehavior including: instances of hostility, undermining of a colleague’s work during meetings/talks, cutting corners on research, sabotaging a colleague’s research, or producing fraudulent work to be more competitive. These findings suggest that authorship disputes may contribute to an unhealthy competitive dynamic that can undermine researchers’ wellbeing, team cohesion, and scientific integrity. (shrink)

This chapter describes the potential far‐reaching consequences of contemplative higher education for the fields of science and medicine.

Criteria for the evaluation of most scholars’ work have recently received wider attention due to high-profile cases of scientific misconduct which are perceived to be linked to these criteria. However, in the competition for career advancement and funding opportunities almost all scholars are subjected to the same criteria. Therefore these evaluation criteria act as ‘switchmen’, determining the tracks along which scholarly work is pushed by the dynamic interplay of interests of both scholars and their institutions. Currently one of the most (...) important criteria is the impact of publications. In this research, the extent to which publish or perish, a long standing evaluation criterion, led to scientific misconduct is examined briefly. After this the strive for high impact publications will be examined, firstly by identifying the period in which this became an important evaluation criterion, secondly by looking at variables contributing to the impact of scholarly papers by means of a non-structured literature study, and lastly by combining these data into a quantitative analysis. (shrink)

A “Critical Perspectives” article in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry on scientific integrity in Brazil summarizes several misconduct cases documented therein . To further reinforce the responsible conduct of research in developing countries and to fight against the unaccountability of many editors , we describe here a Mexican instance of alleged in-house plagiarism .In June 2011, we submitted a “Correspondence” note to a Nature group journal to expose what we claimed to be a breach of collegiality and inappropriate authorship in (...) a three-page mutation report just published in that journal. Our main complaints were two: the surreptitious way in which we believed that both displayed metaphases in that report had been obtained from our files by a local colleague and then published without our consent and the massive easy-on co-authorship: 14 out of 21 co-authors declared just to have “provided clinical material.” In c .. (shrink)

Governmental research grants are financially supported by taxpayers to meet financial requirements of research, particularly research that is unlikely to be supported by private funds. Researchers reward donors by producing knowledge. Publishing research results in an academic journal reflects achievement by researchers; however, receiving a grant award does not. The latter only provides the researcher with the capacity to perform his/her research. Applicants may receive more financial support than they actually need because there is no strict audit on the amount (...) of money requested by each research proposal. There are fewer opportunities to apply for a governmental grant than there are for publishing an academic article, and the application process for governmental grants is not flexible. Some potentially innovative research may be impeded by the intense competition among scientific researchers applying for financial support. Researchers face stiffer competition at this stage than at the stage of publishing results. This paper suggests that scientific foundations can improve their efficiency by giving funding preference to economic proposals. Methods for estimating the efficiency of grants are proposed. The practice followed by the Small Grants for Exploratory Research programme of the National Science Foundation validates my analysis and recommendations. (shrink)

The gradual crowding out of singleton and small team science by large team endeavors is challenging key features of research culture. It is therefore important for the future of scientific practice to reflect upon the individual scientist’s ethical responsibilities within teams. To facilitate this reflection we show labor force trends in the US revealing a skewed growth in academic ranks and increased levels of competition for promotion within the system; we analyze teaming trends across disciplines and national borders demonstrating why (...) it is becoming difficult to distribute credit and to avoid conflicts of interest; and we use more than a century of Nobel prize data to show how science is outgrowing its old institutions of singleton awards. Of particular concern within the large team environment is the weakening of the mentor–mentee relation, which undermines the cultivation of virtue ethics across scientific generations. These trends and emerging organizational complexities call for a universal set of behavioral norms that transcend team heterogeneity and hierarchy. To this end, our expository analysis provides a survey of ethical issues in team settings to inform science ethics education and science policy. (shrink)

We argue and demonstrate that an emphasis on outperforming others may lead to perverse effects. Four studies show that assigning other-referenced performance goals, relative to self-referenced mastery goals, may lead to more interpersonally harmful behavior in an information exchange context. Results of Study 1 indicate that assigned performance goals lead to stronger thwarting behavior and less accurate information giving to an exchange partner than assigned mastery goals. Similarly, in Study 2 performance goal individuals more subtly deceived highly competent opponents relative (...) to lowly competent opponents, who received more blatant treatment. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 show in methodologically complementary ways that tactical deception considerations may account for the interpersonally harmful behavior of performance goal individuals. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the politics of trust in the clinical testing of pharmaceuticals in the US. Specifically, I analyze trust in terms of its institutional manifestations in the pharmaceutical clinical trials industry. In the process of testing new drugs, pharmaceutical companies must (1) protect their proprietary information from the clinicians who conduct their studies, and (2) find a way to ensure human subjects’ compliance to study protocols. Concern with these two critical issues leads drug companies to approach clinicians (...) and research subjects with an attitude of mistrust and the desire to exert control over their activities. This orientation results in an institutionalization of mistrust that structures the relationships and activities required for the clinical development of new pharmaceutical products. (shrink)

The Survey of Organizational Research Climate (SORC) is a validated tool to facilitate promotion of research integrity and research best practices. This work uses the SORC to assess shared and individual perceptions of the research climate in universities and academic departments and relate these perceptions to desirable and undesirable research practices. An anonymous web- and mail-based survey was administered to randomly selected biomedical and social science faculty and postdoctoral fellows in the United States. Respondents reported their perceptions of the research (...) climates at their universities and primary departments, and the frequency with which they engaged in desirable and undesirable research practices. More positive individual perceptions of the research climate in one’s university or department were associated with higher likelihoods of desirable, and lower likelihoods of undesirable, research practices. Shared perceptions of the research climate tended to be similarly predictive of both desirable and undesirable research practices as individuals’ deviations from these shared perceptions. Study results supported the central prediction that more positive SORC-measured perceptions of the research climate were associated with more positive reports of research practices. There were differences with respect to whether shared or individual climate perceptions were related to desirable or undesirable practices but the general pattern of results provide empirical evidence that the SORC is predictive of self-reported research behavior. (shrink)

Critical studies in higher education often embrace the ideas of the slowness movement to address time pressure. However, this desirable horizon presents some limitations. On the one hand, by emphasizing solutions at the individual level, boosting slowness may promote tactics incapable of producing changes to the underlying structural dynamics of time pressure. On the other hand, approaches based on slowness may also inadvertently foster a form of ethical paternalism within the context of ethical pluralism by prescribing substantive models of practice (...) ultimately based on ‘do this quickly or do it slowly.’ This theoretical research moves away from the temporal paradigm to that of the way of relating. Building upon the ethical concept of resonance, the approach focuses on a formal critique of the current socioeconomic and ethical dynamics of social acceleration, growth, and innovation that can contribute to projecting non-alienated relationships in higher education. (shrink)

This paper studies whether incentivizing performance with competition and cooperation-based incentive schemes, rather than individual compensation, affects peer effects on subsequent risk behaviour. We run a laboratory experiment in which we introduce three different compensation schemes—piece rate, the equal-split-sharing-rule and a tournament—associated with a real effort task and we measure risk behaviour both before and after the effort task. We find that competition more than halves peer influence on risk behaviour compared with piece-rate compensation and in some specifications produces negative (...) peer effects. Competition also significantly reduces an individual’s feeling of attachment to their peers and self-reported peer influence. (shrink)

RESUMO O tema do artigo é a proliferação de más condutas na ciência que vem ocorrendo nas últimas décadas, designada ao longo do texto pelo termo "a epidemia". As más condutas são violações de normas éticas da ciência, sendo os tipos mais importantes as várias modalidades de fraude, e de falsidades autorais. O artigo divide-se em seis seções. Na primeira, apresenta-se o tema e alguns esclarecimentos terminológicos. Na segunda, são expostas as evidências que corroboram a existência da epidemia. A terceira (...) versa sobre a reação à epidemia, caracterizando sua dinâmica, marcada pelo conflito entre duas posições: a moralizadora, que aplica o tratamento moralizador no combate à epidemia; e a negacionista, que tende a negar a existência da epidemia e que resiste às medidas moralizadoras. A quarta seção versa sobre as causas da epidemia, introduz uma distinção entre produtivismo e producionismo e propõe uma análise das formas como o produtivismo fomenta as más condutas. A quinta consiste em uma crítica ao tratamento moralizador, fundamentada em suas inadequações, principalmente sua ineficácia. Na conclusão, procura-se dar uma ideia de qual seria uma alternativa satisfatória ao tratamento moralizador. ABSTRACT The article deals with the proliferation of violations of ethical norms of science, that started to develop a few decades ago. It will be referred to as "the epidemic". The most important types of these violations are varieties of fraud, and such forms of author misconduct as plagiarism, self-plagiarism, etc. The article is divided into six sections. In the first, the topic is introduced and some terminology clarified. In the second, evidence is presented which corroborates the existence of the epidemic. The third deals with the reaction to the epidemic, by characterizing its dynamics in terms of being dominated by conflict between two positions: the moralizing one - which promotes the application of the moralizing treatment to combat the epidemic; and the negationist one - which tends to deny the existence of the epidemic, and resists the moralizing measures. The fourth explores the causes of the epidemic. A distinction is introduced between productivism and productionism, and an analysis is proposed of the ways productivism fosters violations of ethical norms of science. The fifth consists of a critique of the moralizing treatment, based on its inadequacies, mainly its inefficacy. The conclusion points to an alternative to the moralizing treatment. (shrink)

Responsibility within life science research is a highly scrutinised field. Increasingly, scientists are presented with a range of duties and expectations regarding their conduct within the research setting. In many cases, these duties are presented deontologically, forgoing extensive discussion on how these are practically implemented into the minutiae of daily research practices. This de-contextualized duty has proven problematic when it comes to practical issues of compliance, however it is not often considered as a fundamental aspect of building ethics discourse. This (...) paper examines this issue in detail, particularly focusing on how differences in the contrasts between the ideal and real physical research environments cause conceptual problems for scientists and retard ethical engagement. Such issues are particularly pertinent in low- and middle-income countries. This paper combines theoretical and empirical analyses using the concept of “dual-use” as a focalizing topic. The data show that the research environment acts as an intimate component in the interpretation and implementation of ethical actions. (shrink)

The exposure of scientific scandals and the increase of dubious research practices have generated a stream of studies on Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), such as failure to acknowledge co-authors, selective presentation of findings, or removal of data not supporting desired outcomes. In contrast to high-profile fraud cases, QRPs can be investigated using quantitative, survey-based methods. However, several design issues remain to be solved. This paper starts with a review of four problems in the QRP research: the problem of precision and (...) prevalence, the problem of social desirability bias, the problem of incomplete coverage, and the problem of controversiality, sensitivity and missing responses. Various ways to handle these problems are discussed based on a case study of the design of a large, cross-field QRP survey in the social and medical sciences in Sweden. The paper describes the key steps in the design process, including technical and cognitive testing and repeated test versions to arrive at reliable survey items on the prevalence of QRPs and hypothesized associated factors in the organizational and normative environments. Partial solutions to the four problems are assessed, unresolved issues are discussed, and tradeoffs that resist simple solutions are articulated. The paper ends with a call for systematic comparisons of survey designs and item quality to build a much-needed cumulative knowledge trajectory in the field of integrity studies. (shrink)

Research integrity is usually discussed in terms of responsibilities that individual researchers bear towards the scientific work they conduct, as well as responsibilities that institutions have to enable those individual researchers to do so. In addition to these two bearers of responsibility, a third category often surfaces, which is variably referred to as culture and practice. These notions merit further development beyond a residual category that is to contain everything that is not covered by attributions to individuals and institutions. This (...) paper discusses how thinking in RI can take benefit from more specific ideas on practice and culture. We start by articulating elements of practice and culture, and explore how values central to RI are related to these elements. These insights help identify additional points of intervention for fostering responsible conduct. This helps to build “cultures and practices of research integrity”, as it makes clear that specific times and places are connected to specific practices and cultures and should have a place in the debate on Research Integrity. With this conceptual framework, practitioners as well as theorists can avoid using the notions as residual categories that de facto amount to vague, additional burdens of responsibility for the individual. (shrink)

Criteria for the evaluation of most scholars’ work have recently received wider attention due to high-profile cases of scientific misconduct which are perceived to be linked to these criteria. However, in the competition for career advancement and funding opportunities almost all scholars are subjected to the same criteria. Therefore these evaluation criteria act as ‘switchmen’, determining the tracks along which scholarly work is pushed by the dynamic interplay of interests of both scholars and their institutions. Currently one of the most (...) important criteria is the impact of publications. In this research, the extent to which publish or perish, a long standing evaluation criterion, led to scientific misconduct is examined briefly. After this the strive for high impact publications will be examined, firstly by identifying the period in which this became an important evaluation criterion, secondly by looking at variables contributing to the impact of scholarly papers by means of a non-structured literature study, and lastly by combining these data into a quantitative analysis. (shrink)

The research climate plays a key role in fostering integrity in research. However, little is known about what constitutes a responsible research climate. We investigated academic researchers’ perceptions on this through focus group interviews. We recruited researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University Medical Center to participate in focus group discussions that consisted of researchers from similar academic ranks and disciplinary fields. We asked participants to reflect on the characteristics of a responsible research climate, the barriers they (...) perceived and which interventions they thought fruitful to improve the research climate. Discussions were recorded and transcribed at verbatim. We used inductive content analysis to analyse the focus group transcripts. We conducted 12 focus groups with 61 researchers in total. We identified fair evaluation, openness, sufficient time, integrity, trust and freedom to be mentioned as important characteristics of a responsible research climate. Main perceived barriers were lack of support, unfair evaluation policies, normalization of overwork and insufficient supervision of early career researchers. Possible interventions suggested by the participants centered around improving support, discussing expectations and improving the quality of supervision. Some of the elements of a responsible research climate identified by participants are reflected in national and international codes of conduct, such as trust and openness. Although it may seem hard to change the research climate, we believe that the realisation that the research climate is suboptimal should provide the impetus for change informed by researchers’ experiences and opinions. (shrink)

Some research indicates that women professionals—when compared to men—may be more ethical in the workplace. Existing literature that discusses gender and ethics is confined to the for-profit business sector and primarily to a US context. In particular, there is little attention paid to gender and ethics in science professions in a global context. This represents a significant gap, as science is a rapidly growing and global professional sector, as well as one with ethically ambiguous areas. Adopting an international comparative perspective, (...) this paper relies on 121 semi-structured interviews with US and UK academic physicists to examine how physicists perceive the impact of gender on science ethics. Findings indicate that some US and UK physicists believe that female scientists handle ethical issues within science in a feminine way whereas their male colleagues approach ethics in a masculine way. Some of these physicists further claim that these different approaches to science ethics lead to male and female scientists’ different levels of competitiveness in academic physics. In both the US and the UK, there are “gender-blind” physicists, who do not think gender is related to professional ethics. Relying on physicists’ nuanced descriptions this paper contributes to the current understanding of gender and science and engineering ethics. (shrink)

In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the medical environment (...) (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research. (shrink)

How can the history of research ethics be expanded beyond the standard narrative of codification—a story that does not reach back beyond World War II—without becoming so broad as to lose all distinctiveness? This article proposes a history of research ethics focused on the “scientific self,” that is, the role-specific identity of scientists as typically described in terms of skills, competencies, qualities, or dispositions. Drawing on three agenda-setting texts from nineteenth-century history, biology, and sociology, the article argues that the “revolutions” (...) these books sought to unleash were, among other things, revolts against inherited conceptions of scientific selfhood. They tried to redefine the scientific self in their respective fields of inquiry by advocating particular catalogs of virtues or character traits. These ideals of selfhood, their contested nature notwithstanding, translated into practice in so far as they influenced hiring and selection policies and found their way into educational systems. The project of reclaiming the scientific self as an important subject of study in the history of research ethics is not an antiquarian pursuit, but related to an ethical question faced by scientists today: How are their scientific selves being shaped by funding schemes, research evaluation protocols, and academic hiring policies? (shrink)

The realities of human agency and decision making pose serious challenges for research ethics. This article explores six major challenges that require more attention in the ethics education of students and scientists and in the research on ethical conduct in science. The first of them is the routinization of action, which makes the detection of ethical issues difficult. The social governance of action creates ethical problems related to power. The heuristic nature of human decision making implies the risk of ethical (...) bias. The moral disengagement mechanisms represent a human tendency to evade personal responsibility. The greatest challenge of all might be the situational variation in people’s ethical behaviour. Even minor situational factors have a surprisingly strong influence on our actions. Furthermore, finally, the nature of ethics itself also causes problems: instead of clear answers, we receive a multitude of theories and intuitions that may sometimes be contradictory. All these features of action and ethics represent significant risks for ethical conduct in science. I claim that they have to be managed within the everyday practices of science and addressed explicitly in research ethics education. I analyse them and suggest some ways in which their risks can be alleviated. (shrink)

BackgroundResearch misconduct and questionable research practices have been the subject of increasing attention in the past few years. But despite the rich body of research available, few empirical works also include the perspectives of non-researcher stakeholders.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science. (...) We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting.ResultsGiven the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series with the current paper focusing on the problems that affect the integrity and research culture. We first found that different actors have different perspectives on the problems that affect the integrity and culture of research. Problems were either linked to personalities and attitudes, or to the climates in which researchers operate. Elements that were described as essential for success were often thought to accentuate the problems of research climates by disrupting research culture and research integrity. Even though all participants agreed that current research climates need to be addressed, participants generally did not feel responsible nor capable of initiating change. Instead, respondents revealed a circle of blame and mistrust between actor groups.ConclusionsOur findings resonate with recent debates, and extrapolate a few action points which might help advance the discussion. First, the research integrity debate must revisit and tackle the way in which researchers are assessed. Second, approaches to promote better science need to address the impact that research climates have on research integrity and research culture rather than to capitalize on individual researchers’ compliance. Finally, inter-actor dialogues and shared decision making must be given priority to ensure that the perspectives of the full research system are captured. Understanding the relations and interdependency between these perspectives is key to be able to address the problems of science.Study registrationhttps://osf.io/33v3m. (shrink)

Research misconduct is an alarming concern worldwide, and especially in Italy, where there is no formal training of young researchers in responsible research practices. The main aim of this study was to map the perceptions and attitudes about RM in a sample of young researchers attending a one-week intensive course on methodology, ethics and integrity in biomedical research, held at the University of Insubria. To this end, we administered the Scientific Misconduct Questionnaire to all attendees at the beginning of the (...) course. Thereafter, SMQ-R was re-administered at the end, to assess the impact of the course on the responsiveness of study participants, which is intended as the frequency of responses other than “don’t know”. Results show that respondents rate as high their own understanding about rules and procedures related to scientific misconduct, as well as the effectiveness of their institution’s measures for reducing it. Most of them perceive as low the chances of getting caught for RM. Some respondents believe that cases of misconduct occur in their workplace and that the integrity of a research is not solely the responsibility of the principal investigator. Among the main factors contributing to research misconduct, the need for publications, unclear definition of what constitutes misconduct and pressure for external funding do stand out. Respondents are concerned about the amount of misconduct and express a pressing need for training on research ethics. Remarkably, the responsiveness of participants tends to increase with course attendance. This finding may be useful to support education programmes devoted to research methodology, ethics and integrity among young researchers. (shrink)

In a survey on research misconduct, roughly 20% of the respondents admitted that they have submitted federal grant proposals that include scholars as research participants even though those scholars were not expected to contribute to the research effort. This manuscript argues that adding such false investigators is illegal, violating multiple federal statutes including the False Statements Act, the False Claims Act, and False, Fictitious, or Fraudulent Claims. Moreover, it is not only the offending academics and the false investigators that face (...) civil and criminal penalties because administrators may also be liable if they sign off on proposals and are in a position to know that false investigators might be included. Policy recommendations that should reduce the use of false investigators include changing institutional cultures, better training and oversight of the responsible conduct of research, and, most importantly, making all grant reviews double blind. (shrink)

While attention to research integrity has been growing over the past decades, the processes of signalling and denouncing cases of research misconduct remain largely unstudied. In this article, we develop a theoretically and empirically informed understanding of the causes and consequences of reporting research misconduct in terms of power relations. We study the reporting process based on a multinational survey at eight European universities. Using qualitative data that witnesses of research misconduct or of questionable research practices provided, we aim to (...) examine actors’ rationales for reporting and not reporting misconduct, how they report it and the perceived consequences of reporting. In particular we study how research seniority, the temporality of work appointments, and gender could impact the likelihood of cases being reported and of reporting leading to constructive organisational changes. Our findings suggest that these aspects of power relations play a role in the reporting of research misconduct. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of research misconduct in an academic context. Specifically, we elucidate the processes that affect researchers’ ability and willingness to report research misconduct, and the likelihood of universities taking action. Based on our findings, we outline specific propositions that future research can test as well as provide recommendations for policy improvement. (shrink)

Strong forces lead to a withering of academia as it exists today. The major causal forces are the rankings mania, increased division of labor in research, intense publication pressure, academic fraud, dilution of the concept of ‘university’, and inadequate organizational forms for modern research. Academia, in a broader sense understood as ‘the locus of seeking truth and learning through methodological inquiry’, will subsist in different forms. The conclusion is therefore pessimistic with respect to the academic system as it presently exists (...) but not to scholarly endeavour as such. However, the transformation predicted is expected to be fundamental. (shrink)

We argue and demonstrate that an emphasis on outperforming others may lead to perverse effects. Four studies show that assigning other-referenced performance goals, relative to self-referenced mastery goals, may lead to more interpersonally harmful behavior in an information exchange context. Results of Study 1 indicate that assigned performance goals lead to stronger thwarting behavior and less accurate information giving to an exchange partner than assigned mastery goals. Similarly, in Study 2 performance goal individuals more subtly deceived highly competent opponents relative (...) to lowly competent opponents, who received more blatant treatment. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 show in methodologically complementary ways that tactical deception considerations may account for the interpersonally harmful behavior of performance goal individuals. (shrink)

Practices related to research misconduct seem to have been multiplied in recent years. Many cases of scientific fraud have been exposed publicly, and journals and academic institutions have deployed different measures worldwide in this regard. However, the influence of specific social and cultural environments on scientific fraud may vary from society to society. This article analyzes how scientists in Japan deal with accusations of scientific fraud. For such a purpose, a series of scientific fraud cases that took place in Japan (...) has been reconstructed through diverse sources. Thus, by analyzing those cases, the social basis of scientific fraud and the most relevant aspects of Japanese cultural values and traditions, as well as the concept of honour which is deeply involved in the way Japanese scientists react when they are accused of and publicly exposed in scientific fraud situations is examined. (shrink)

University psychology and sociology researchers rated the likelihood they would engage in misconduct as described in 9 research scenarios, while also making moral judgments and rating the likelihood of discovery and sanctions. Multiple regression revealed significant effects across various scenarios for moral judgment as well as shame and embarrassment on reducing misconduct. The effects on misconduct of the perceived probability of sanctions were conditioned on moral judgments in some scenarios. The results have implications for how universities address the prevention, detection, (...) and sanctioning of research misconduct. (shrink)

It is commonly hypothesized that scientists are more likely to engage in data falsification and fabrication when they are subject to pressures to publish, when they are not restrained by forms of social control, when they work in countries lacking policies to tackle scientific misconduct, and when they are male. Evidence to test these hypotheses, however, is inconclusive due to the difficulties of obtaining unbiased data. Here we report a pre-registered test of these four hypotheses, conducted on papers that were (...) identified in a previous study as containing problematic image duplications through a systematic screening of the journal PLoS ONE. Image duplications were classified into three categories based on their complexity, with category 1 being most likely to reflect unintentional error and category 3 being most likely to reflect intentional fabrication. We tested multiple parameters connected to the hypotheses above with a matched-control paradigm, by collecting two controls for each paper containing duplications. Category 1 duplications were mostly not associated with any of the parameters tested, as was predicted based on the assumption that these duplications were mostly not due to misconduct. Categories 2 and 3, however, exhibited numerous statistically significant associations. Results of univariable and multivariable analyses support the hypotheses that academic culture, peer control, cash-based publication incentives and national misconduct policies might affect scientific integrity. No clear support was found for the “pressures to publish” hypothesis. Female authors were found to be equally likely to publish duplicated images compared to males. Country-level parameters generally exhibited stronger effects than individual-level parameters, because developing countries were significantly more likely to produce problematic image duplications. This suggests that promoting good research practices in all countries should be a priority for the international research integrity agenda. (shrink)