Researchers experience of misconduct in research in Malaysian higher education institutions

This article offers a qualitative analysis of research misconduct witnessed by researchers during their careers, either by research students or fellow researchers, when conducting or supervising research in their respective departments. Interviews were conducted with 21 participants from various research backgrounds and with a range of research experience, from selected universities in Malaysia. Our study found that misbehavior such as manipulating research data, misrepresentation of research outcomes, plagiarism, authorship disputes, breaching of research protocols, and unethical research management was witnessed by participants among junior and senior researchers, albeit for different reasons. This indicates that despite the steps taken by the institutions to monitor research misconduct, it still occurs in the research community in Malaysian institution of higher education. Therefore, it is important to admit that misconduct still occurs and to create awareness and knowledge of it, particularly among the younger generation of researchers. The study concludes that it is better for researchers to be aware of the behaviors that are considered misconduct as well as the factors that contribute to misconduct to solve this problem.     

How do researchers perceive research misbehaviors? A transcultural case study of Chinese and Flemish researchers

China has achieved a dramatic development in scientific research over the last few decades. However, just like many other countries, it has also seen a surge of scientific misconducts. With its expansion of international publications, retractions due to suspected research misconduct are also on the rise. A transcultural case study was conducted by investigating the perception of research misbehaviors by Chinese researchers compared to their Belgian Flemish colleagues. The study was designed to find out variation in research practices in different countries and to see how research was shaped and influenced by cultural contexts. An online questionnaire was sent to 3,236 researchers by e-mails and it received a response rate of 13.09%. They were asked to score 32 research misbehaviors on a 5-point scale. The findings suggested that compared to Flemish respondents, the Chinese had a significantly higher acceptance toward most research misbehaviors. To be more specific, the Chinese respondents felt less unacceptable toward behaviors violating such values as honesty, fairness, and verifiability than the Flemish, while their perceptions of behaviors that violated such values as responsibility, objectivity, and truth were not different compared to the Flemish. This case study implies that the Chinese research community is in an urgent need of training in responsible conduct of research and strong as well as sound guidelines for responsible research practices in place.     

Researchers’ interpretations of research integrity: A qualitative study

Despite increasing interest in integrity issues, relatively few studies have examined researchers’ own interpretations of integrity. As part of the Perspectives on Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM) project, we sought to explore how researchers themselves define research integrity. We conducted 33 semi-structured interviews with clinical and laboratory-based researchers from across Switzerland. Data were transcribed and coded using thematic analysis and illustrative quotes were selected. Researchers defined integrity in terms of honesty, transparency, and objectivity, and generally stressed the importance of sticking to the research question and avoiding bias in data interpretation. Some saw research integrity as being synonymous with scientific integrity, but others regarded research integrity as being a subset of the wider domain of scientific integrity. A few participants equated research integrity with mere absence of misconduct, but the majority of participants regarded integrity as being more than this. Researchers regarded truth as the key aspect of integrity, though they expressed this in different ways and with various emphases on honesty, transparency, and objectivity. Integrity goes beyond avoiding misconduct, and scientific integrity has a wider domain than research integrity.     

Evaluating U.S. Medical Schools' Efforts to Educate Faculty Researchers on Research Integrity and Research Misconduct Policies and Procedures

This paper examines how well U.S. medical school institutions are doing to promote research integrity. It is an important question to ask in order to determine whether there are sufficient and adequate protections in place to protect the U.S. Public Health Service's (PHS) resources devoted to medical research. This paper focuses on 5,100 medical school researchers' knowledge of what constitutes research misconduct as well as their willingness to report it to the research integrity officer (RIO) and educate their Ph.D. trainees. We learned that 5.6% of researchers could correctly distinguish seven or more of the nine scenarios that depicted likely research misconduct, as defined by the PHS regulations, from scenarios describing other ethical issues. Instead, researchers had expansive definitions and often inappropriately identified infractions such as conflicts of interest, Institutional Review Board (IRB) violations, and other breaches in ethical standards to be research misconduct. In addition, researchers who correctly identified four instances of likely research misconduct in the test items were highly unlikely to report their observations to a RIO. Researchers also provided insight on the factors they believe influence their decision making process of whether to report research misconduct. In addition, this paper also reports on the guidance that faculty said they provided their trainees on research misconduct issues. We conclude with a discussion and recommendations on what institutional leaders might consider doing in order to enhance their research integrity efforts and protect their institution's reputation.     

Emphasizing the experiences of researchers after RCR instructions: Introduction to Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to highlight the experiences of individuals who participate in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training program held at various universities in Malaysia. In response to a mailing request sent to 40 individuals who had undertaken a RCR training program, 15 participants agreed to be interviewed. The results of the study showed that the three main reasons for participating in the training were as follows: anticipation for knowledge gained; personal experience with research misconduct; and establishing a new network of researchers. In terms of the positive effects gained from undertaking the training, the participants highlighted an increased awareness of the issues and problems related to research misconduct; the need to promote integrity in research conduct; a change in the way they conduct their research; and a change in the way they confront and address misconduct. The findings of this study should be valuable for policy makers and those involved in the management of research programs and ethics, as it demonstrated the importance of RCR training in equipping researchers with the necessary knowledge to conduct research responsibly, and to avoid research misconduct.     

Data Audit as a Way to Prevent/Contain Misconduct

Research misconduct is frequently in the media headlines. There is consensus among leading experts on research integrity that the prevalence of misconduct in research is at least 1%, and shoddy work may even go over 5%. Unfortunately, misconduct in research impacts all walks of life from drugs to human subject protections, innovations, economy, policy, and even our national security. The main method of detecting research misconduct depends primarily on whistleblowers. The current regulations are insufficient since dependence on whistleblowers manifests itself as an accidental hit or miss. No other endeavor in our society depends on such a poor system of discovery of misconduct to remedy it. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I proposed data audit as a means to prevent/contain research misconduct. The audit has to protect the creative process and be non-obtrusive. Data audit evaluates the degree of correspondence of published data with the source data. The proposed data audit does not require any changes in the way researchers carry out their work.     

Assessing the Seriousness of Research Misconduct: Considerations for Sanction Assignment

Federal and institutional policies recommend the criterion of “seriousness” as a guide for sanction assignment in cases where researchers have been found to have committed research misconduct. Discrepancies in assessments of seriousness for similar acts of misconduct suggest the need to clarify what might be meant by the seriousness of research misconduct and how the criterion can be used to assign sanctions. This essay demonstrates how determinations of seriousness can differ depending on the set of ethical appeals employed and argues that an expanded lexicon for talking about the seriousness of research misconduct would help to promote fairness and consistency in sanction assignment. It concludes with some policy recommendations for those charged with research misconduct sanction assignment and for those who oversee research integrity at institutional levels.     

Is failure to raise concerns about misconduct a breach of integrity? Researchers’ reflections on reporting misconduct

This article describes and discusses the views of researchers on the significance of raising concerns about scientific misconduct in their work environment and the reasons or circumstances that might deter them from doing so. In this exploratory qualitative research study, we conducted in-depth interviews with 33 researchers working in life sciences and medicine. They represent three seniority levels and five universities across Switzerland. A large majority of respondents in this research study argued that failure to raise concerns about scientific misconduct compromises research integrity. This is an encouraging result demonstrating that researchers try to adhere to high ethical standards. However, further interaction with respondents highlighted that this correct ethical assessment does not lead researchers to take the consequent action of raising concerns. The factors that discourage researchers from raising concerns need to be addressed at the level of research groups, institutions, and by setting a positive precedent which helps them to believe in the system’s ability to investigate concerns raised in a timely and professional manner. Training of researchers in research integrity related issues will have limited utility unless it is coupled with the creation of research culture where raising concerns is a standard practice of scientific and research activities.     

An International Study of Research Misconduct Policies

Research misconduct is an international concern. Misconduct policies can play a crucial role in preventing and policing research misconduct, and many institutions have developed their own policies. While institutional policies play a key role in preventing and policing misconduct, national policies are also important to ensure consistent promulgation and enforcement of ethical standards. The purpose of this study was to obtain more information about research misconduct policies across the globe. We found that twenty-two of the top forty research and development funding countries (55%) had a national misconduct policy. Four countries (18.2%) are in the process of developing a policy, and four (18.2%) have a national research ethics code but no misconduct policy. All twenty-two countries (100%) with national policies included fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism in the definition of misconduct, but beyond that there was considerable diversity. Unethical authorship was mentioned in 54.6% of the misconduct definitions, followed by unethical publication practices (36.4%), conflict of interest mismanagement (36.4%), unethical peer review (31.8%), misconduct related to misconduct investigations (27.3%), poor record keeping (27.3%), other deception (27.3%), serious deviations (22.7%), violating confidentiality (22.7%), and human or animal research violations (22.7%). Having a national policy was positively associated with research and development funding ranking and intensiveness. To promote integrity in international research collaborations, countries should seek to harmonize and clarify misconduct definitions and develop procedures for adjudicating conflicts when harmonization does not occur.     

Cross-Field Comparison of Ethics Education: Golden Rules and Particulars

Research misconduct negatively impacts the scientific community and society in general. Providing training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to researchers is one viable approach to minimizing research misconduct. Although recent evidence suggests ethics training can indeed be effective, little empirical work has examined the similarities and differences across fields. In the present study, we analyzed 62 empirical studies in engineering, biomedical science, social science, and mixed fields. The findings suggest certain instructional principles, or “golden rules,” apply generally to all fields. These golden rules include maintaining a field-specific or field-general approach and emphasizing processes in training. The findings also suggest that content areas contributing to instructional effectiveness vary as a function of field. Generally, it appears that all fields may benefit from taking a multi-pronged approach to ethics education wherein the salient field issues are covered. Implications for RCR education are discussed.     

Best Practice to Order Authors in Multi/Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Research Publications

Misunderstanding and disputes about authorship are commonplace among members of multi/interdisciplinary health research teams. If left unmanaged and unresolved, these conflicts can undermine knowledge sharing and collaboration, obscure accountability for research, and contribute to the incorrect attribution of credit. To mitigate these issues, certain researchers suggest quantitative authorship distributions schemes (e.g., point systems), while others wish to replace or minimize the importance of authorship by using “contributorship”—a system based on authors’ self-reporting contributions. While both methods have advantages, we argue that authorship and contributorship will most likely continue to coexist for multiple ethical and practical reasons. In this article, we develop a five-step “best practice” that incorporates the distribution of both contributorship and authorship for multi/interdisciplinary research. This procedure involves continuous dialogue and the use of a detailed contributorship taxonomy ending with a declaration explaining contributorship, which is used to justify authorship order. Institutions can introduce this approach in responsible conduct of research training as it promotes greater fairness, trust, and collegiality among team members and ultimately reduces confusion and facilitates resolution of time-consuming disagreements.     

Research Misconduct Definitions Adopted by U.S. Research Institutions

In 2000, the U.S. federal government adopted a uniform definition of research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP), which became effective in 2001. Institutions must apply this definition of misconduct to federally-funded research to receive funding. While institutions are free to adopt definitions of misconduct that go beyond the federal standard, it is not known how many do. We analyzed misconduct policies from 183 U.S. research institutions and coded them according to thirteen different types of behavior mentioned in the misconduct definition. We also obtained data on the institution’s total research funding and public vs. private status, and the year it adopted the definition. We found that more than half (59%) of the institutions in our sample had misconduct policies that went beyond the federal standard. Other than FFP, the most common behaviors included in definitions were “other serious deviations” (45.4%), “significant or material violations of regulations” (23.0%), “misuse of confidential information” (15.8%), “misconduct related to misconduct” (14.8%), “unethical authorship other than plagiarism” (14.2%), “other deception involving data manipulation” (13.1%), and “misappropriation of property/theft” (10.4%). Significantly more definitions adopted in 2001 or later went beyond the federal standard than those adopted before 2001 (73.2% vs. 26.8%), and significantly more definitions adopted by institutions in the lower quartile of total research funding went beyond the federal standard than those adopted by institutions in the upper quartiles. Public vs. private status was not significantly associated with going beyond the federal standard.     

The Ghost Collaborator

Collaboration is increasingly important for researchers in all disciplines. Universities and funding bodies tend to prefer projects that involve interdisciplinarity, collaboration between different institutions, and international consortiums. Such projects can yield great benefits, but they also pose particular challenges for certain aspects of research integrity, and particularly for awarding credit and authorship. In this article, we describe and analyze the phenomenon of the ghost collaborator, who is initially fully involved and makes a full contribution to a project’s design, but then finds him- or herself excluded from meetings and publications.     

Responsible Authorship: Why Researchers Must Forgo Honorary Authorship

Although widespread throughout the biomedical sciences, the practice of honorary authorship—the listing of authors who fail to merit inclusion as authors by authorship criteria—has received relatively little sustained attention. Is there something wrong with honorary authorship, or is it only a problem when used in conjunction with other unethical authorship practices like ghostwriting? Numerous sets of authorship guidelines discourage the practice, but its ubiquity throughout biomedicine suggests that there is a need to say more about honorary authorship. Despite its general acceptance among many scientists, honorary authorship is unethical. Even if burdensome, responsible researchers are obligated to forgo honorary authorship.     

National Scientific Misconduct Policies in Argentina: Two Definitions of Research Misconduct

ABSTRACT

In “An International Study of Research Misconduct Policies”, Resnik et al. count Argentina in the list of countries without national research misconduct policies. In this paper, we clarify that Argentina has national policies of research misconduct and present the research misconduct definitions of two official science organisms: the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the Ethics Committee of the Argentine Ministry of Science (MINCyT).     

The Responsible Conduct of Bioethics Research

The responsible conduct of research in the biomedical and behavioral sciences has received significant attention since the late 1980s. However, very little has been written about the responsible conduct of bioethics research. Bioethics is an interdisciplinary field and brings together divergent ethical standards and practices which may be the source of tension or conflict. This article argues that bioethicists should reflect more on ethical issues in the responsible conduct of bioethics research through examination of authorship practices and peer review. I also outline three possible approaches to promote research integrity in bioethics.     

Canadian policy on reporting breaches of research integrity: When should Research Ethics Boards be informed?

ABSTRACT

In Canada, institutions that receive research funding from the three federal granting agencies must establish research ethics boards (REBs) to review the ethical acceptability of research involving humans. Institutions are also expected to promote the responsible conduct of research, fostering researchers’ abilities to act with integrity in the conduct of their research. Where a researcher fails to act with integrity in research with humans, institutional policies and procedures of the U15, Canada’s most research-intensive universities, vary in the extent to which they involve their REBs in response to such breaches. Some make no mention of the REB, whereas others state that their REB should be provided with information relating to upheld allegations. In this paper, we argue that when allegations of research integrity breaches are corroborated, the institution’s REB should be identified as a party required to receive that information. Only then can REBs ensure compliance with research ethics standards, which is essential to maintain the public’s trust.     

Dealing with Misconduct in Biomedical Research: A Review of the Problems and the Proposed Methods for Improvement

The increasing complexity of scientific research has been followed by increasing varieties of research misconduct. Dealing with misconduct involves the processes of detection, reporting, and investigation of misconduct. Each of these steps is associated with numerous problems which need to be addressed. Misconduct investigation should not stop with inquiries and disciplinary actions in specific episodes of misconduct. It is necessary to decrease the personal price paid by those who expose misconduct and to protect the personal and professional interests of honest researchers accused of misconduct unfairly or mistakenly. There is no dearth of suggestions to improve the objectivity and fairness of investigations. What is needed is the willingness to test the various options and implement the most suitable ones.     

New Classification of Research Misconduct from the Viewpoint of Truth,Trust, and Risk

ABSTRACT

Fabrication, Falsification and Plagiarism (FFP) and Questionable Research Practice (QRP) have been used worldwide in the classification of research misconduct. However, FFP comprises two distinct categories of misconduct: FF is extreme research misconduct that betrays truth, while P undermines trust of science community. Irreproducibility and inadequate practice of research also betray trust. Research misconduct has the potential to cause serious risk of safety in daily life. The proposed classification system is outlined as follows: Class I misconduct: Betrayal of the truth: (1) Fabrication and (2) Falsification. Class II misconduct: Betrayal of trust: (1) Plagiarism of text ; Irreproducibility; and (3) Inadequate research practice. Class III misconduct: Risk to safety of health and industrial products: (1) Risk to safety of health and (2) Risk to safety of industrial products. The proposed classification reflects deeper values of truth, trust, and risk more directly than the previous classification and elucidates issues about nature and significance of misconduct.