Scientific Misbehavior

Jiunn-Ren Roan

Fall 2006

What is scientific misbehavior?

The scientific paper is a fraud in the sense that it does give

a totally misleading narrative of the processes of thought

that go into the making of scientific discoveries.

－ Sir Peter Medawar (1915-198

7)

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine 1960

From http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1960/

Research misconduct is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarismin proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting researchresults.

• Fabrication is making up data or results and recording orreporting them.

• Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, orprocesses, or changing or omitting data or results such thatthe research is not accurately represented in the researchrecord.

• Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas,processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.

Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences ofopinion.

— http://www.ostp.gov/html/001207_3.html

FFP Definition for misconduct given byUS Office of Science and Technology Policy

Scientists behaving badly—Nature 435, 737 (2005)

From Nature 435, 737 (2005)

Some Recent Cases

Yung Park (University of Cambridge and Korea Advanced Institute ofScience and Technology) published about 80 papers in 19 journalsbetween 1995 and 2002.

8 papers between 1997and 2001 are plagiarized!

2 pairs of papers withsignificant overlap inseparate journals!

From Nature 427, 3 (2004)

Anders Pape Møller (Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris):• Author of more than 450 articles and several books• Many of his findings are incorporated into standard textbooks• “It’s hardly possible to write a paper in behavioral ecology

without making extensive citations of Anders’s work”—Ian Jones (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada)

In 2001 Møller retracted a paper he published in Oikosin 1998 after Rabøl wrote to Oikos’s editor-in-chief.

Unsatisfied with what Møller said (“the measurementsand analyses behind the data...were flawed andmisinterpreted”), Rabøl filed a formal complaint againstMøller to Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty(DCSD).

Møller was unable to provide original data. DCSD’sreport: “There are very strong indications that it must,at least in part, be fabricated” and what he said in hisretraction is “hardly credible”.From Science 303, 606 (2004)

Luk Van Parijs (MIT, Caltech, Harvard):• A rising star at MIT in the hot field of RNA interference• “I thought Luk was an excellent scientist...”

—David Baltimore (Caltech president, Winner of Nobel Prizein Medicine 1975)

In 2004 graduate students and postdocs in VanParij’s lab approached MIT administrators withallegations of research misconduct saying “Therewere data that they could not verify the origins of.

MIT began examination of the 22 papers VanParijs co-authored during his 5 years at MIT.

Caltech looked at 2 articles Van Parijs published,including one co-authored by Baltimore.

Harvard scrutinize a paper by Van Parijs.

MIT fired Van Parijs.

From http://web.mit.edu/giving/spectrum/winter03/healthy-promise.html

References 1. B. C. Martinson, M. S. Anderson, and R. de Vries, Scientists behaving badly.

Nature 435, 737 (2005). 2. J. Giles, Plagiarism in Cambridge physics lab prompts calls for guidelines.

Nature 427, 3 (2004). 3. A. Abbott, Prolific ecologist vows to fight Danish misconduct verdict.

Nature 427, 381 (2004). 4. G. Vogel, F. Proffitt, and R. Stone, Ecologists roiled by misconduct case.

Science 303, 606 (2004). 5. J. Couzin, MIT terminates researcher over data fabrication.

Science 310, 758 (2005). 6. R. Dalton, Universities scramble to assess scope of falsified results.

Nature 438, 7 (2005). 7. J. Couzin and M. Schirber, Fraud upends oral cancer field, casting doubt on prevention

Trial. Science 311, 448 (2006). 8. E. Marris, Doctor admits Lancet study is fiction.

Nature 439, 248 (2006). 9. I. Fuyuno and D. Cyranoski, Doubts over biochemist’s data expose holes in Japanese

fraud laws. Nature 439, 514 (2006). 10. D. Normile, Tokyo professor asked to redo experiments.

Science 309, 1973 (2005). 11. I. Fuyuno, Further accusations rock Japanese RNA laboratory.

Nature 440, 720 (2006).

References (cont’d) 12. D. Normile, Panel discredits findings of Tokyo University team.

Science 311, 595 (2006). 13. G. Vassart, J. V. Broeck, F. Mendive, and T. V. Loy, The parable of the mandarin.

EMBO Rep. 6, 592 (2005). 14. J. Couzin and K. Unger, Cleaning up the paper trail.

Science 312, 38 (2006). 15. B. E. Barton, Six-word rule could turn description into plagiarism.

Nature 436, 24 (2005) 16. F. Grinnell, Misconduct: acceptable practices differ by field.

Nature 436, 776 (2005). 17. E. Marris, Should journals police scientific fraud?

Nature 439, 520 (2006). 18. K. Powell, Misconduct mayhem.

Nature 441, 122 (2006). 19. J. Giles, Taking on the cheats.

Nature 435, 258 (2005).