The study of the role of education in controlling scientific misconduct in Iran: using Grounded Theory

The study of the role of education in controlling scientific misconduct in Iran: using Grounded TheoryScientific misconduct in the most general sense is a deliberate violation of methodical and moral norms with the intention of deceiving others. Falsification, fabrication and plagiarism formally had been considered as the main examples of scientific misconduct by some researchers. In recent years, due to the reports presented, it has become necessary to examine the main misconduct cases and find its causes. It is assumed that at least one of the influential factors among academics should be rooted in the period of education, including higher education. Therefore, in this study, the following question was answered: What is the role of education, elementary education or higher education, in recognizing ethical norms, finding skills in reasoning and motivating researchers to perform ethical practice? to answer the question, the Grounded Theory method was used. In this study in-depth interviews with 15 faculty and students including researchers in ethics and education studies were done. Simultaneously, the obtained data were analyzed with primary, secondary, axial and selective coding and the final model was extracted. The final solution is to strengthen the implicit learning through the teacher-student  face to face relationship in order to transfer the scientific-ethical behaviors, continuous rethinking of the criteria of scientific assessment, and continuous application of the criteria of assessment and the main and valuable subject of assessment and finally strengthening small "ethical environments" in a society that follows the norms of a scientific community including transparency and critique, freedom and differences of individuals.