Research ethics: 3 ways to blow the whistle

The Fraud Bowl

An idea for how to incentivize best practices combatting scientific fraud

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...

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...

Scientific sleuths come in from the cold

Research integrity investigators are starting to organize, but the field, and the people, remain idiosyncratic

Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story

Some say there’s a global crisis of trust — but research reveals where the real problems lie.

“Paging Dr. Fraud”: The Fake Publishers That Are Ruining Science

For years, spurious journals have proliferated online, promising academic credibility in exchange for cash.

Claims about scientific rigour require rigour

Nature Human Behaviour - Claims about scientific rigour require rigour

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.

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…

Why we don’t really know what the public thinks about science

Measuring trust isn’t enough. Furthering knowledge about the institutions and norms of science is the best way to build credibility.

Fraudulent citations, blamed on AI hallucinations, are becoming more common in research papers

“Fabricated” citations that do not reference real academic papers are spreading in the literature, polluting the public record of science, a new study found

The natural selection of bad science

Abstract. Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, sugg