Questions tagged [research-misconduct]
On suspected or actual distortion of the research and/or research publication process through dishonest or otherwise unethical behavior. Includes (but is not limited to) issues such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, violation of ethical standards related to human subjects research, and theft of intellectual property.
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Advice for somebody who considers to join a PHD program in order to go to research about the possibly negative sides
A friend of mine considers to join a PhD program in order to go to science. I think she has a very idealized view of science and the prospects there. (I personally am somebody who left science after ...
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Is it plagiarism if I don't mention where I found a quotation originally?
Say author A writes on Topic B and in this context uses quotation C which is not from the same field and appears highly original in Topic B. I then read this article, and I am myself writing on Topic ...
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If I notice an error in a figure after manuscript submission, could I be accused of falsification of data during review stage?
I have submitted a paper to a reputed journal (computer science; computer vision to be specific). While i was keenly waiting for the reviews, they were getting delayed. So I began working on an ...
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Co-author submitted new data post-review without my (first author) consent
I am the first author of a manuscript that was recently "accepted in principle". The submission, peer review and revisions of this manuscript happened after I left the laboratory of the corresponding ...
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What should PhD students do if they submit a paper to two journals and a reviewer notices concurrent submission?
I am in a desperate situation. I made a mistake and committed academic misconduct.
I have submitted my article to two journals in parallel, let's say in j1 and j2. Once I received acceptance from ...
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Do we know what proportion of scientific reproducibility issues are fraud-related?
A few days ago there was an article on the LSE blog about scientific reproducibility which made little sense to me until I realised they were equating 'low reproducibility' with 'scientific fraud':
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Where can I find examples of research misconduct reports?
I am writing a report documenting evidence for research misconduct. The report is to be submitted to the ethics board of a university. Are there publicly available examples of such reports? Not the ...
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My code is published as original work by a different group. What should I do?
I've found some code that I've posted online that has a BSD license published in a supplementary material of a different group in a high impact journal. The authors have replaced the name on the ...
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Unaddressed ethical violation I know about but have no connection to: Do I report it?
I've been made aware of a situation that blatantly violates the honor code at my institution (also every institution). However it does not involve my lab, and the folks in the relevant lab are not ...
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Is scientific misconduct relatively normalised in some countries or academic cultures?
My question was provoked by this comment, and the fairly popular responses to it. I've seen similar sentiment expressed before, though always as asides rather than any direct 'accusation'.
In my ...
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How to spot problematic pictures in a publication? [duplicate]
A few professors from the National Taiwan University were caught manipulating experimental data in their publications on several prestigious journals this year. They were accused of using the same ...
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Can intentionally omitting related work (citations) be considered as misconduct?
I've seen a recent journal paper that presents a solution to a problem, and it in the introduction it has a statement that the problem has not been solved yet.
That wouldn’t be very strange if I didn’...
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How do you determine whether a case study is fraudulent?
I had recently read an interesting anthropological case study composed of interviews of Iranians before and after the Iranian Revolution. But after reading the case study, I started wondering whether ...
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What to do if a coauthor lies?
My coauthor and I work at some organization. After I started working with him, people told me that he allegedly took some data (used in the paper) from the organization without authorization (He was ...
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What are typical examples of 'Reference Misuse' when defined as 'using references to support predetermined arguments rather than illuminate debate'?
A research ethics article recently appeared that described the results of a survey in which academics were asked whether they had participated in various forms of research misconduct. The responses ...
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Should I breach peer-review confidentiality if I suspect misconduct and the editor is not willing to pursue it?
I was a peer reviewer for a paper that I did not find credible. The data were archived after the paper was published and show many curious or impossible (non-integer counts for example) patterns. I ...
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What is the difference between falsifying data and just being wrong?
I had to take a standard ethics seminar at my research lab (everyone in my lab must take the seminar). As one would expect, I learned that the charges associated with falsifying data are serious.
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One of my student researchers is likely falsifying some results/data. What are the consequences?
Relevant info and background:
I'm an engineering Post Doc at an American university. One of my roles is to basically function as a 'project manager' for a couple projects that have a number of ...
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Researchers had a paper retracted due to plagiarism and no one at their university is aware of it
A year ago a professor at my department and her grad student had plagiarized a journal paper and published it. The paper was retracted, and the journal published a clear notice that it was due to ...
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Is there such a thing as fraud in mathematics?
Can you commit fraud in a mathematics publication? Or is this a privilege of empirical sciences?
If a mathematician jumps from one bit of information to another that does not follow logically, from ...
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How can an author get assurance that his work will not be stolen by journal staff or reviewers?
Suppose some author provides his original research article to a journal for publication. In this way, he is disclosing or revealing his confidential research work to that journal. Now, consider the ...
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Is it ok to get independent feedback before handing in thesis?
I have a thesis to hand in at my university.
Am I allowed to ask a grad student who is an expert in my field to have a look at my thesis and give me feedback (more than merely grammatical / ...
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When applying for a new job or fellowship, how to protect your ideas from being stolen by the lab you are applying to?
If you want to change fields you have to explain the reason why you want to do that. In case of fellowship, you need some professor to host you and support your application, so you must contact him by ...
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Within social science research, which research practices are generally regarded as problematic? [closed]
I am very interested in understanding the aspects of current social science research that are generally accepted as being problematic (by researchers and other commentators).
I regard problematic ...
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Are P-hacking and hypothesising after results are known considered misconduct in academia?
This question is inspired by a comment to another question where I asked for help on how to argue against P-hacking and hypothesising after results are known (Harking). Someone questioned the ...
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How to argue against questionable research practices such as P-hacking and Harking?
I have come into conflict with co-authors when being asked to do things that I consider to be questionable.
Once I was told to try every possible specification of a dependent variable (count, ...
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How to report plagiarism in a publication
A friend showed me a paper that literally copied two pages of another paper, without any reference. This clearly is a fraud. He tried to inform the authors of the original paper. Is there any other ...
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What consequences are imposed by an institution when a researcher commits plagiarism?
Not sure if you've been following the story of a South Korean Prodigy, who tried to get his PhD degree based on a proceedings article (copyright protected) that his advisor has previously published ...
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How can I stop a "citation cartel" still active?
How can I fight against a "citation cartel" (still active)?
They are manipulating citations (mostly through "coercive citation") from at least two journals. Two journal are used as "platforms" and two ...
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Academic Appeal [closed]
On What grounds can I make an appeal for the substitution of my Academic Award certificate? My dissertation has been refused to be marked because of 5% similarity to another students work.
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What should I do if I believe my former advisor is alleging to journal editors that I have copied his study?
I have been through many different things with my previous advisor.
He wrote publications with my research proposal with his former female student after forcing me to give up the topic. Also, as ...
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What can I do if I wrote a grant proposal with a professor, and now that it is funded he refuses to hire me?
I discussed my ideas with a professor at a university here in China, where I live. He said that I should write a grant proposal and he will submit it, and if he gets a grant he will hire me (as a ...
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Grant fraud, should I bust my PhD advisor?
tl;dr: Should I report this large grant fraud, and what consequences could it have for me?
For obvious reasons, I will try to maintain some anonymity here.
So I defended my thesis. Which was funded ...
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I have been sanctioned by my country's Higher Education Commission after being accused of plagiarism. What can I do?
I am a professor in a public university and have been accused of plagiarism by an anonymous letter to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.
The anonymous letter framed two charges:
It ...
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What should I do if I think a researcher in my university is intentionally employing incompetent people?
In our university there are a lot of great researchers and a very competent people in general. I've discovered today that one of our researchers is intentionally employing people who are totally ...
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How do I referee a paper when the authors may be behaving dishonestly?
This is a follow-up to this question: Should I recommend rejection for a paper I referee if the authors don't make changes that they could have made?
To recap: I was sent a paper to referee by ...
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How often are results faked in computer science papers?
Especially in the the more experimental subfields of computer science like systems, how often are results faked? If there is no verification process for any code used, do researchers sometimes fake ...
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What to do if the data in a paper you are reviewing is copied from another paper of the same authors which is supposed to be a different device?
I got a paper to review and the authors of this paper already published a conference proceedings on the same topic but supposedly a different device. When comparing the figures of the conference ...
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KAU is accused of hiring well-known professors to boost university rankings by adding affiliation. Is it ethical to accept this kind of offer?
For those unaware of the situation, here are some links:
Messerly, Megan. 'UC Berkeley Professor Critiques Saudi University's
Recruitment Process Of World's Top Researchers'. The Daily
...
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What to do if I am on a hiring committee and I am aware that a candidate has exhibited unethical behavior in his previous position?
After a series of unethical incidents that affected me directly in my previous academic institution, I managed to move to a higher ranked department in my field about seven years ago. I am now in the ...
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How to approach PhD admissions after leaving previous PhD because my advisor tried to force me to manipulate data
I started my PhD in one of the very well renowned institutes in Germany.
Unfortunately, in the middle I was forced very much to manipulate the data. I was extremely upset and did not know what to do. ...
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How can editors and reviewers detect data manipulation?
I am preparing a paper in the field of Computer Science.
In order to report test results, we usually run a number of tests and report the average of those tests.
For each test, we generate random ...
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What to do when asked to do something that seems unethical by a co-advisor which might result in losing credit for my work
I am doing a course project, and my co-advisor contributed to my design with tips and comments - nothing major. When the system started working he told me no to reveal all the details while presenting ...
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What to do with papers after misconduct allegation was resolved?
I was alleged in scientific misconduct in form of authorship abuse. More details are in my previous questions
How to respond to allegations of misconduct in authorship dispute?
Should I put my ...
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My professor is rigging data and plagiarizing. What can I do?
I am a graduate student. My department head is manipulating data in his research papers and skillfully alters plagiarized text to avoid detection. I found this out while working with him on a journal ...
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If someone conducts unethical research unbeknownst to anybody, but produces positive results, what would happen to the research once discovered?
I was just wondering about this specific scenario.
Say someone was researching nature vs. nurture, but his experiments involved keeping babies in a controlled environment for the first 10 years of ...
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What procedures should I follow if my preprint is stolen and published in a journal?
I am surprised by the fact that a journal published an article that I have had in arXiv for a few months. The date of publication is after the date that I posted on arXiv. The submission date in the ...
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Is there any research on the prevalence of academic theft?
Some — perhaps many — academics seem to be very careful in keeping unpublished work secret. It is not difficult to find anecdotes where academic ideas are stolen, such as in this post by @Markus. ...
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What should I do when images in a publication appear to have been faked?
I just came across a paper published in a journal (IF < 2), which has used a couple of images without mentioning the source. This itself is not necessarily a problem. But they seem to be from a ...
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Why is data falsification reported to be more usual in some fields than others?
This big info-graphic (at the end of the question) explains that biomedicine and psychology have greater rate of data fabrication/falsification/mishandling than other fields. A similar effect was ...
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