Scientific fraud is more open than secret

 

From Tariqur Rahman

A colleague from Europe during his recent visit to Malaysia shared his nervousness about a student who applied for a PhD position in his laboratory.

Having been in academia for more than 25 years, he found that the student was too good to be true.

The first thing that struck him was a long list of 76 peer-reviewed publications authored by the student, who just completed a Master’s degree a few years ago.

I said we are suffering from a pandemic of “prolific authoritis”. We have too many prolific authors in the academic or scientific world.

For many of us, penning a paper once a month is a piece of cake. For others, a “piece” could be baked once a week or even less.

Those prolific authors must be super-efficient with their regular business of teaching, supervising, marking exam papers, writing research proposals and last reading new publications.

A common excuse is the super cool (borrowing a term from my colleague) ability of some authors to create networks and research collaboration, that is, the more they collaborate, the more published papers they will have.

Nevertheless, the subjective concern about their actual intellectual contribution remains unsolved. Hence the accusations of unethical practice often escape the dock in the courtroom.

Academic misconduct or scientific fraud – no matter how we name it – is not limited to unethical authors. There are other forms, too.

As of now, there are about 45,000 papers that are listed as “retracted” in the database of Retraction Watch for one or another form of scientific fraud or misconduct.

Surely the count does not reflect the actual number. In fact, many will go unnoticed before the respective authors end their career with their names in the hall of fame, with hundreds of papers authored.

Once I was evaluating a thesis of a postgraduate student. I found some data too good to be true. I contacted other examiners and raised the concern.

I was told that we as examiners have no reason (or authority) to check the authenticity or validity of the data.

All we have to do is to see if the student has the merit to be awarded the degree based on what is produced in the thesis.

I failed to convince my colleague that as examiners, we also have the responsibility to check all aspects of the thesis, not only how it is written; if the hypothesis, research questions, and objectives are met; or if the student has thoroughly discussed the results and compiled a reasonable and relevant literature review.

On a different occasion, one of my students requested to use some data to publish a paper. I managed to convince the student otherwise as the reproducibility and authenticity of the data could not be confirmed.

Given the constraints of time and resources, it was practically impossible to repeat the experiment.

Sadly, the student had to accept fate without having the publication, but many others would not bother.

On the one hand, students have constraints of time and resources to finish the degree, on the other hand, they have the requirement to publish a certain number of papers to achieve the degree.

In the end, they feel forced to publish using whatever data they have.

Academics feel obliged to pursue such publications because of their students and for their own promotion, contract renewal, and grant applications.

Here the reproducibility, authenticity, and quality of the data remain at best secondary or no priority at all.

Given the urgency of both students and academics, predatory and many so-called reputed journals grab the opportunity to publish papers by charging authors “article processing fees” in the name of open-access publications.

Hence the praxis “publish or perish” has now become “pay and publish”.

Thus, the vicious cycle of requirements for publishing papers for a degree, appointment, and promotion in turn the reputation of the institution they work for creates traps for many forms of scientific misconduct.

These are not secret anymore. Albeit the question remains: can we escape the traps? - FMT

Prof Tariqur Rahman is associate dean (continuing education) at the Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Malaya.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.