{"id":2253,"date":"2014-11-12T10:20:24","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T04:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/?p=2253"},"modified":"2018-05-22T16:27:49","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T10:57:49","slug":"solutions-reduce-dishonest-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/solutions-reduce-dishonest-research\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can We Reduce the Amount of Dishonest Research?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no doubt that there is too much dishonest research being published in academic journals. Do a Google search and you\u2019ll find plenty of examples of once renowned scientific papers<\/a> that were later shown to contain fabricated data. While we can never completely eliminate such papers, we can reduce their numbers. Retracting bad papers<\/a> and punishing perpetrators is an inefficient way to reduce publishing fraud. Prevention is the best way. A multi-pronged approach is required at both the research and the publishing level.<\/p>\n

Nip It in the Bud<\/h2>\n

A typical research team\u00a0has one or more junior members, graduate students for example, and a senior member such as a professor. Many cases of dishonest research occur because the graduate student presents\u00a0fake data<\/a>\u00a0to the professor. How to prevent this? The professor needs to become more involved in some of the details of the data collection. For example, he should require his students to show him raw data of important experiments\u00a0and\u00a0not just photocopies. If a student suddenly solves a long-standing problem, he deserves acclaim, but his work first\u00a0demands scrutiny, with probing questions, and perhaps an independent verification by another student. If a professor has a reputation of doing such things, few students will be tempted to try to \u201cpull the wool over his eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

My graduate adviser evidently thought he had been victimized by a less than honest student shortly before I joined the group (the older group members definitely thought so). He began politely asking his current students to show him original data\u2014spectra and elemental analyses. We should all do the same.<\/p>\n

The Review Process<\/h2>\n

Scrutiny by the professor will prevent most fraud that originates at a lower level, but what if the researcher does the work himself? Publishing houses must do their part by assigning competent reviewers. The more remarkable the findings are claimed to be, the more careful the scrutiny needs to be. This works against the grain of publishers, of course\u2014they want to publish breakthrough work as fast as possible. But extra scrutiny and longer lag times are\u00a0the price we pay for less fraud and higher quality publications.<\/p>\n

I have been misled on one or two occasions by erroneous<\/a> if not outright fabricated papers, and I can testify how much it wastes a researcher\u2019s time. If we all do our part to reduce dishonest research, we will safeguard our reputations and save the time of a lot of other researchers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no doubt that there is too much dishonest research being published in academic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[751,754],"tags":[1495],"ppma_author":[1894],"class_list":["post-2253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publication-stages","category-publication-ethics","tag-scientific-transparency"],"better_featured_image":null,"acf":{"faq_main_heading":"","faq_heading_one":"","faq_heading_two":"","faq_heading_three":"","faq_heading_four":"","faq_heading_five":"","faq_heading_six":"","faq_description_one":"","faq_description_two":"","faq_description_three":"","faq_description_four":"","faq_description_five":"","faq_description_six":""},"views":363,"single_webinar_page_date":null,"single_webinar_page_time":null,"session_agenda":null,"who_should_attend_this_session":null,"about_the_speaker_field":null,"co-webinar-sec":null,"co_webinar_sec_one":null,"speaker-name":null,"webinar-date":null,"webinar-time":null,"webinar-s-image":null,"custum_webinar_category":null,"authors":[{"term_id":1894,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"daveishan","display_name":"Enago Academy","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/cropped-favicon-192x192-1.png","url2x":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/cropped-favicon-192x192-1.png"},"author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Enago Academy, the knowledge arm of Enago, offers comprehensive and up-to-date resources on academic research and scholarly publishing to all levels of scholarly professionals: students, researchers, editors, publishers, and academic societies. It is also a popular platform for networking, allowing researchers to learn, share, and discuss their experiences within their network and community. The team, which comprises subject matter experts, academicians, trainers, and technical project managers, are passionate about helping researchers at all levels establish a successful career, both within and outside academia."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2253"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}