What do we know about fraud and other forms of intellectual dishonesty in science? Part 1: the spectrum of deviant behavior in science.

Several recent issues of the ISI@ newspaper ‘fle Scierrtistm12 contain articles on ethical issues in science. One is a reviewJ of a book entitfed Fake Prophets: Fraud and Error in Science and Medicine,d by virologist Alexander Kohn, Tel Aviv Medical School, Israel. Tw05,6 discuss the controversial, recently published study on coauthorship by Walter W. Stewart and Ned Feder, Nationaf Institutes of Heafth (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland.7 Another discusses the Piltdown Man hoax;g still another is an interview with William F. Raub, deputy director, NIH, concerning many issues, including misconduct in science,g Raub touches on several notorious cases of fraud, including those involving John R. Darsee, formerly of the Harvard Medicaf School, Boston, Massachusetts, 10and Robert Shstsky, who was affdiated with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). 11 But these are just a few of the instances of scientific misconduct that have recentfy come to light; other instances of intellectual dishonesty have long since been identified and interpreted by soeiaf scientists, such as Columbia University sociologists Rolm-t K. Mertonlz and Harriet Zuckerman. 13It’s not necessary to repeat details of individual cases that have already been well reported elsewhere. But these instances raise a number of questions: What do we know about the causes and incidence of misconduct in science—especially fraud? What are its effects, both on scientists and on society? And how do we deal with it? In this essay, we discuss the range of behaviors one encounters in defining misconduct in science and some of the difficulties involved in estimating its frequency; in Part 2, we foeus on the causes of scientific misconduct and its effects on the scientific community. In researching these issues, we examined 1S1’sdatabase and learned that the current literature on fraud is largely informaf or anecdotal. Moreover, many authors seem to be large[y unaware of the continuing tra& tion of interest among social scientists in patterns of deviant behavior in science. The 1984 and 1985 research fronts on fraud (’‘Problems of fraud and deceit in science” [#84-3489] and “Misconduct, fraud, and other social aspects of science” [#85-3243]) contain “core” documents-that is, oftencited publications-that consist primarily of letters, editorials, commentaries, and opinion pieces. These items present no data based on rigorous, controlled studies. A core publication for the 1985 front, for instance, is an editorial on the Darsee affair by Arnold S. Relman, editor, New England Journal of Medicine (NEYM). 14Even the books that lead us to some of the current literature through their subsequent citation in the Science Citation Index@ are not based on scientific research-including Betrayers of the Truth by science journalists William J. Broad and Nicholas Wade. 15