University of Michigan researcher says scientific misconduct has gone global

At an event at FAPESP headquarters, Nicholas Steneck warned that plagiarism, fraud and fabricated data in articles are no longer just found among traditional science powers, and called for a coordinated response by the countries most engaged in research.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – Plagiarism, fraud and fabrication of scientific findings are no longer problems that affect only the world’s traditional science powers, such as the United States, Japan, China and the United Kingdom.

This assessment was made by Nicholas Steneck, the director of the Research Ethics and Integrity Program at the University of Michigan in the United States, in a lecture given at the III BRISPE – Brazilian Meeting on Research Integrity, Science and Publication Ethics, held on August 14, 2014, at FAPESP headquarters.

According to Steneck, because they now work on a global scale, universities, research institutions and research-sponsoring agencies all over the world need to engage in coordinated efforts to address these issues to prevent jeopardizing research integrity as a whole.

“Scientific misconduct was initially limited to a few countries, such as the United States. But now, emerging science countries like Brazil have “joined the club” as a result of the increased visibility of their research and have been negatively impacted by the problem,” said Steneck, one of the world’s leading experts on research integrity.

According to Steneck, there has been an increase in the number of cases of scientific misconduct throughout the world in recent years. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) about the reasons for the retraction of 2,047 scientific articles indexed in the PubMed repository and produced by researchers from 56 countries revealed that only 21.3% of the retractions were attributed to error.

In contrast, 67.4% of the retractions were attributed to scientific misconduct, according to the study. Of these, 43.4% were due to fraud or suspected fraud, 14.2% to duplicate publication and 9.8% to plagiarism. The United States, Japan, China and Germany were responsible for 75% of the retractions.

The authors of the study estimate that the percentage of articles that were retracted due to fraud has increased by nearly 10% since 1975, when cases of scientific misconduct were initially made public.

Another study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, used data from the Medline database regarding articles published through June 2012 that addressed the topic of scientific misconduct, to try to examine the problem in developing countries.

According to the authors, despite the dearth of available data, the results of the analysis indicate that the problem is as common in the emerging scientific countries as it is in wealthier countries that have a strong research tradition.

“We have seen that there are more cases of scientific misconduct today than 10 years ago, but we don’t know if the number of cases is increasing or if more are just being discovered and revealed,” Steneck told Agência FAPESP. “The fact is that people are paying more attention to the problem of scientific misconduct and that increasingly more new cases are being reported.”

In still another study, published in April in the Journal of the Medical Library Association, 20 countries were identified as having the largest number and percentage of articles in the biomedical sciences retracted due to the problems of plagiarism and data duplication. These articles had been published between 2008 and 2012 and indexed in PubMed.

The study indicated that Italy, Turkey, Iran and Tunisia have the highest percentages of articles retracted due to plagiarism and that Finland, China and Tunisia present the highest rates of articles retracted due to duplicate publication. Brazil is ranked 17th in the general ranking, just behind Spain and ahead of Finland, Tunisia and Switzerland.
 

“Tip of the iceberg”

According to Steneck, the attention and response to the problem of scientific misconduct have been directed toward the most spectacular international cases, such as that of anesthesiologist Yoshitaka Fujii of Toho University in Japan, who has had 183 articles retracted since 2011 due to falsification of data.

These special cases, however, may represent only the “tip of the iceberg” for the problem. A survey conducted by Déjà vu, a computer system that identifies the titles and summaries of articles indexed in scientific repositories and allows verification of suspicions, identified 79,300 articles indexed in Medline with this type of problem.

Of all of the articles, only 2,100 were analyzed, and of these, 1,900 were retracted. More than 74,000 have yet to be verified by publications.

“There are many cases of scientific misconduct that are underestimated by universities and research institutions that could come to light in the future,” Steneck said.

According to the expert’s assessment, factors that contribute to the problem of underestimation are the erroneous assumptions that scientific misconduct is rare; that it is more common in highly competitive fields, such as the biomedical sciences; and that science is a self-regulating activity.

“There is enormous trust in science as an activity that has strict internal controls, which makes it hard to establish a consensus regarding its need for increased monitoring,” he said. “Universities, institutions and research-sponsoring agencies in countries that generate science have to become engaged in educating and promoting research integrity among their researchers.”

Role of institutions

According to Steneck, the Brazilian scientific community has recognized the problem and has formulated policies and actions to prevent scientific misconduct and to enhance research integrity.

However, universities and research institutions need to provide the best training possible in research integrity to students, professors and researchers, the specialist said.

“Universities and research institutions that have many departments and laboratories need to observe whether their researchers are being effectively trained in research integrity,” he stated.

One of the ways to do this type of training, according to Steneck, is by establishing an internal body designed solely for this purpose, as FAPESP proposed in its Code of Good Scientific Practice.

Published in 2011, the Foundation’s code establishes that the universities and research institutions in the state of São Paulo should have an internal body specifically designed to promote integrity in research through training programs and educational activities, in addition to responding strictly and fairly to claims of possible scientific misconduct.

“Universities and research institutions in the state of São Paulo supported by FAPESP are expected both to define clear policies and procedures to handle issues of research integrity and to have one or more departments or an internal body designed to promote good scientific practices through regular programs and investigate and punish possible cases of misconduct,” said Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, FAPESP scientific director, at the event’s opening session.

“However, the investigation and punishment of possible cases of misconduct do not represent the most important role to be played by the bodies that promote good scientific practices at the universities. The main role of these bodies should be to promote an ongoing culture of research integrity at the institutions,” he emphasized.

According to Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos, a member of FAPESP’s Area Panel Committee on the Humanities and Social Sciences, Architecture and Economy, there are still no universities or research institutions in the state of São Paulo that have established an internal body designed to promote research integrity, as specified by the FAPESP Code of Good Scientific Practice.

“We introduced the code three years ago and have determined that the response by universities and research institutions with regard to their responsibilities has been a bit slow,” he said.

“Universities and research institutions in the state of São Paulo and in Brazil in general have not yet organized themselves in a way in which to systematically define and implement policies to promote good research practices,” said Lopes dos Santos.

Last year, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) became the first Brazilian institution to establish a committee specifically designed to promote and handle questions regarding research integrity.

Called the Action Committee on Research Ethics (CTEP), the body consists of 30 members drawn from the university’s professors, technical staff and students.

“The committee’s goal is to broadly address ethical questions related to academic integrity involving various divisions and departments of the university that present specific demands,” said Sonia Vasconcelos, vice-coordinator of the CTEP.

“We’re trying to identify areas of consensus and address conflicts related to research integrity to positively reflect on student training, the work of the professors and the research studies carried out at the university,” she said.