Scientific fraud in writing : 1

[Guest guest]

The material used here is mainly from the presentation of Dr B. Gitanjali.I have

added my words in between. - Vijay

Why is fraud more common in medicine ?

- " Biological variation " is accepted in results.

- Fruits of research are higher.

- Experiments done elsewhere are usually not repeated and most of the funding

agencies do not provide funds for repetition of experiments.

- Research in hard sciences like physics is easier to verify than in medicine.

- Scrutiny is not easy in medical research.

- Sometimes ignorance is responsible.

- Publish or perish system prevailing

- Ambition, fierce competition for growing in the career

- Pressure from seniors to publish fast

- Training deficient on ethics of scholarly writing

- Poor writing skills

- Faster gains

Scientific fraud:

It is deliberate, intentional indulgence /fabrication/falsification of evidence

with the intention to deceive or misinform peers and readers of the truthful

scientific knowledge.

Fraud is making, manufacturing or manipulating data, altering experimental

results to fascilitate publication of MS.

It is shoddy, dirty, bad science where there is cooking, trimming, fiddling,

fudging of the data.

Many famous persons in science have been blamed for misconduct in scientific

writing:

- Galileo, Mendel, Pasteur were accused of fudging data.

- Summerlin, an immunologist colored the skin of white mice with black ink.

- Darcee, a Harvard researcher, fabricated data in nearly 100 research

publications.

- Slutsky, published 137 papers in 7 years.

- Malcom Pearce, published papers claiming that he had transplanted an embryo

from an ectopic pregnancy and successfully delivered baby.

Vijay