Social-cognitive barriers to ethical authorship

The apparent increase in research misconduct in the scientific literature has caused considerable alarm in both the biomedical (Benos et al., 2005; Smith, 2006) and psychological research communities (Stroebe et al., 2012). An understanding of research misconduct must be informed by the recognition that the norms of science might be quite general (e.g., Merton, 1942; Bronowski, 1965), ambiguous (Cournand and Meyer, 1976), or even contradictory (e.g., Mitroff, 1974; Ziman, 2000), leading to possible disagreements in terms of what constitutes misconduct within a research community (Fields and Price, 1993; Berk et al., 2000; Al-Marzouki et al., 2005). Considerable insight can be gained from research on behavioral ethics (e.g., Bazerman and Tenbrunsel, 2011; Ariely, 2012; Greene, 2013). Using inappropriate authorship practices as an illustrative example, I consider the role of social-cognitive mechanisms in research misconduct while also suggesting preventative measures.