Perspective

Kornfeld, Donald S.

doi:10.1097/acm.0b013e318257ee6a

Cited by 91 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…However, these groups were responsible for only 40% of the misconduct documented in the ORI reports. The psychiatrist Donald Kornfeld has analyzed a subset of the ORI data (22) and observed “an intense fear of failure” in many trainees who committed misconduct, while some faculty members seemed to possess a “conviction that they could avoid detection.” This suggests that efforts to improve ethical conduct may also need to target faculty scientists, who in some cases are directly responsible for misconduct and in others may be unintentionally fostering a research environment in which trainees and other research personnel feel pressured to tailor results to meet expectations. Programs to help scientists become more effective mentors should be more widely implemented (23).…”

Section: Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct

Fang

Bennett

Casadevall

2013

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A review of the United States Office of Research Integrity annual reports identified 228 individuals who have committed misconduct, of which 94% involved fraud. Analysis of the data by career stage and gender revealed that misconduct occurred across the entire career spectrum from trainee to senior scientist and that two-thirds of the individuals found to have committed misconduct were male. This exceeds the overall proportion of males among life science trainees and faculty. These observations underscore the need for additional efforts to understand scientific misconduct and to ensure the responsible conduct of research.

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Section: Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct

Fang

Bennett

Casadevall

2013

mBio

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“…Policies : the presence, at the institutional or national level, of policies and structures to detect and punish misbehaviour and to promote research integrity is assumed to bolster scientific self-correction and deter scientists from engaging in irresponsible behaviour [2–4]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misconduct Policies, Academic Culture and Career Stage, Not Gender or Pressures to Publish, Affect Scientific Integrity

2015

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The honesty and integrity of scientists is widely believed to be threatened by pressures to publish, unsupportive research environments, and other structural, sociological and psychological factors. Belief in the importance of these factors has inspired major policy initiatives, but evidence to support them is either non-existent or derived from self-reports and other sources that have known limitations. We used a retrospective study design to verify whether risk factors for scientific misconduct could predict the occurrence of retractions, which are usually the consequence of research misconduct, or corrections, which are honest rectifications of minor mistakes. Bibliographic and personal information were collected on all co-authors of papers that have been retracted or corrected in 2010-2011 (N=611 and N=2226 papers, respectively) and authors of control papers matched by journal and issue (N=1181 and N=4285 papers, respectively), and were analysed with conditional logistic regression. Results, which avoided several limitations of past studies and are robust to different sampling strategies, support the notion that scientific misconduct is more likely in countries that lack research integrity policies, in countries where individual publication performance is rewarded with cash, in cultures and situations were mutual criticism is hampered, and in the earliest phases of a researcher’s career. The hypothesis that males might be prone to scientific misconduct was not supported, and the widespread belief that pressures to publish are a major driver of misconduct was largely contradicted: high-impact and productive researchers, and those working in countries in which pressures to publish are believed to be higher, are less-likely to produce retracted papers, and more likely to correct them. Efforts to reduce and prevent misconduct, therefore, might be most effective if focused on promoting research integrity policies, improving mentoring and training, and encouraging transparent communication amongst researchers.

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“…There are high-profile cases of serial fraudsters who have consciously built their careers on fabricated data and who, some research suggests, have personality disorders 1 . We do not encounter such individuals in our programme.…”

Section: What Went Wrong?mentioning

confidence: 99%