A Review of the Types of Scientific Misconduct in Biomedical Research

Abstract

Biomedical research has increased in magnitude over the last two decades. Increasing number of researchers has led to increase in competition for scarce resources. Researchers have often tried to take the shortest route to success which may involve performing fraudulent research. Science suffers from unethical research as much time, effort and cost is involved in exposing fraud and setting the standards right. It is better for all students of science to be aware of the methods used in fraudulent research so that such research can be detected early. Biomedical research is one area that seems to have attracted maximum numbers of fraudulent researchers; hence this article devotes itself to biomedical research scenario.

Enhancing the Taxonomies Relating to Academic Integrity and Misconduct

“…Several studies are devoted to categorizing types of misbehavior in research and higher education. Resnik's work identified between thirteen (Resnik et al 2015a) and seventeen (Resnik et al 2015b) Kumar (2008) revised the types of scientific misconduct in biomedical research, identifying several behaviors besides fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, which are those usually acknowledged by the scientific community. These include malpractice common to other areas, such as omission of citations of sources as well as practices that are more or less exclusive to biomedical sciences, such as unethical animal or human experimentation, photo-manipulation, data augmentation and others (see Table 1).…”

Approaches to Academic Integrity in Medical and Health Research

“…Similar patterns of behavior associated with research misconduct were also occurring at the same time in other areas of health and medical research. William Summerlin's tissue transplantation "patchwork mouse" experiments at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in 1974 involved painting white rats black with a marker pen (Kumar 2008;Steneck 1994). John Darsee's career of data fabrication extended from his undergraduate years at Notre Dame University through medical residency and clinical cardiology fellowships at Emory University and the Brigham and Women's Hospital, affiliated with Harvard University (Culliton 1983).…”

Co-Opted Biased Social Science: 64 Years of Telling Half Truths about the Kibbutz

“…At the same time, the social sciences have been paying increasing attention to researchers' ethics and morality [10]- [17]. While much literature deals with the scientists' ethics about individual interests less is devoted to moral caring for societal interests [18]- [20].…”