Guest post: Should universities investigate questionable papers students and faculty wrote elsewhere?

Be-Art/iStock I am a research ethicist and often get asked by my university to investigate when potential concerns are raised about our staff or students. One example involved the recent case of th…

A response to: Should universities investigate questionable papers students and faculty wrote elsewhere?

Editor’s note: We recently published a guest post on universities’ responsibility for investigating misconduct allegations related to work by staff and students conducted and/or published while the…

Research ethics: 3 ways to blow the whistle

Reporting suspicions of scientific fraud is rarely easy, but some paths are more effective than others.

Investigation finds ‘egregious misconduct’ by CUNY scientist

In a report shared with Science in October 2023, a committee investigating allegations of misconduct by Dr. Hoau-Yan Wang, a professor at the City College of New York (CCNY, which falls under the C…

Influential study touting ChatGPT in education retracted over red flags

The retracted study on ChatGPT in education was already cited hundreds of times.

So maybe now we can agree that having an unchecked research integrity militia who unfortunately has the ear of the press and increasingly that of the the publishers, but who fiercely rejects any… | Ioana A. Cristea

So maybe now we can agree that having an unchecked research integrity militia who unfortunately has the ear of the press and increasingly that of the the publishers, but who fiercely rejects any minimal ethics or code of conduct, is a (growing) problem? Also, that 1. problems have to be investigated before deciding they are are legitimate and serious; 2. this investigation is not social media, blogs and the press; 3. this investigation should not be on the front page of journals and Retraction Watch; 4. there are degrees of seriousness and some things can just be corrected or are simply not very consequential (no, it's not a house of bricks where we have to check every brick, that's a dumb analogy), so being absolutely hysterical and overdramatic about any lie, inaccuracy or mistake is purposeful at worse and should be ignored at best and 5. it is not only unnecessary, but harmful, to also go into other, non-academic things the person did or does to complete "investigations" that you (press, sleuth, blogger, etc) do not have the tools and information to do completely and accurately (this fixation would be called harassment in the before times). Others will justly write about what the institutions did or did not do, but what I want to say is that we really should end it with the blank credit we give to any and all allegations that come from the establish research integrity truth fighters.

A Delphi survey on attitudes to serious research misconduct: Exploring convergence vs. polarization of views of research “sleuths” and research integrity experts

Research fraud is often seen as a rare event, but evidence from self-report surveys indicates that fabrication and falsification of data are common enough to be a problem. This study assessed attit...

Science Works

Science Works is an independent research and policy studio tackling the biggest problems facing UK science and technology.

The Fraud Bowl

An idea for how to incentivize best practices combatting scientific fraud

Fairness is what the powerful ‘can get away with’ study shows

The willingness of those in power to act fairly depends on how easily others can collectively push back against unfair treatment

The Problem With Promoting ‘Gold Standard Science’

Opinion | Branding scientific research with a simplified label risks misleading the public and harming scientific literacy.

I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

This is the story of how I found what I believe to be scientific misconduct and what happened when I reported it. Science is supposed to b...