Research misconduct

Integrity in medical research and publication

“…The Royal College of Physicians has defined misconduct as including piracy (the deliberate exploitation of ideas from others without acknowledgement), plagiarism (the copying of ideas, data or text without permission or acknowledgement) and fraud (involving the deliberate deception, usually the invention of data) 19 . In the USA, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) defines research misconduct as fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in proposing, performing or reviewing research or in the reporting of research results 20 . The various definitions of misconduct that have been proposed indicate the difficulties in delineating a consistent and reproducible prescription, but it is considered to encompass the entire spectrum of misdemeanour from falsification of results to non‐reporting of results and carelessness in manuscript preparation 19,21…”

“…Dishonesty in research is inappropriate because fraudulent research will mislead the direction of clinical research 22 . It will result in inappropriate and wasted research funds, time and effort and may influence dangerous interventions 20 . Undetected misconduct encourages further deceitful behaviour by associated authors and may inspire a fraudulent work environment 19,22 .…”

“…Allegations of scientific dishonesty and proven unethical incidents damage the career prospects of junior doctors, affect the reputation of senior authors and compromise the funding and status of departments 23 . Public revelations of impropriety in medical research damage the scientific community, cast doubts on the quality of health care and reduce public confidence in the profession 20,22, 26 …”

“…Parochialism in citation, as exemplified by the American practice of ignoring most non‐US publications and the discounting of anything not published in English by the British, should be considered unethical 28 . Negative outcome of well‐designed research studies should be reported, and editors have addressed this issue with the Medical Editors Trial Amnesty (META), which is a format allowing submission of data from unpublished studies 20,36 …”