Over the last few years, several major scientific fraud cases have shocked the scientific community. The number of retractions each year has also increased tremendously, especially in the biomedical field, and scientific misconduct accounts for approximately more than half of those retractions. It is assumed that co-authors of retracted papers are affected by their colleagues’ misconduct, and t...

This paper reports data and scholarly opinion that support the perception of systemic flaws in the management of scientific professions and the research enterprise; explores the responsibility that professional status places on the scientific professions, and elaborates the concept of the responsible conduct of research (RCR). Data are presented on research misconduct, availability of research ...

ear Editor, I read the recent publication on “Misconduct in Research and Publication” with great interest [1] . I agree that misconduct in research and publication is not uncommon. Nevertheless, it is rarely mentioned. In fact, there are many incorrect conceptions among researchers on publication ethics. The milder examples are attempts to report only the “positive outcomes”, textual or data re...

Peer review is an essential component of the process that is universally applied prior to the acceptance of a manuscript, grant or other scholarly work. Most of us willingly accept the responsibilities that come with being a reviewer but how comfortable are we with the process? Peer review is open to abuse but how should it be policed and can it be improved? A bad peer review process can inadve...

Scientific integrity has always been a critical issue in performing research. Recently, alarming signals from China have reached the academic community in the USA and Europe about scientific misconduct. One of the most respected newspapers in our country (NRC Handelsblad, 11 December 2010) reported that at least one third of leading scientists (2000 out of 6000) allied to one of the six major C...

Numerous biases are believed to affect the scientific literature, but their actual prevalence across disciplines is unknown. To gain a comprehensive picture of the potential imprint of bias in science, we probed for the most commonly postulated bias-related patterns and risk factors, in a large random sample of meta-analyses taken from all disciplines. The magnitude of these biases varied widel...