We are going to talk about ethic in academia next session. One of our assignment for this week is about studying of a research misconduct. we are asked to go to http://ori.dhhs.gov to learn more about a research misconduct. in misconduct case summaries, I looked at several reports to learn more about this issue. one of the interesting thing that I noticed is most of the recent and past misconducts came back to field of studies such as biology, medicine and psychology. I wonder why in such fields we see more research misconduct? Why researchers in these filed do a plagiarism such as falsifying data or fabricating of them? I don’t have any specific explanation for this issue!
In addition as an assignment I reviewed one of the case studies related to Mr Savine, Adam C. The report can be found in the following link . Adam who was a former doctoral student in WUSL in psychology and he did a research misconduct in the project funded by NIH and NIHM.
In three publication and six conferences he used from falsifying data. According to ORI for instance he falsified data to show “prospective memory is influenced by three dissociable underlying monitoring patterns (attentional focus, secondary memory retrieval, information thresholding), which are stable within individuals over time and are influenced by personality and cognitive differences.” The data of respondent modified such that these hypothesis will support.
The whole of the report tried to show the way he modified or falsified data to support his ideas in papers and conferences articles.
I think we should think more about the reason of such behavior. Why does a person in such level commit in such behaviors? Maybe the pressure and stress of our educational system lead a person to do research misconduct! for me finding out the reason of this behavior and try to find a solution for it , is more important to find people who falsify data and use them!