The primary role of COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) is to provide advice and guidance to journal editors and publishers on ethical issues. COPE also expects its member journals to follow its Code of Conduct (1). The Code emphasizes that editors have a duty to pursue cases of suspected misconduct but makes it clear that such cases should be investigated by the researchers’ institution...

BACKGROUND Research on Vietnam veterans suggests an association between psychological problems, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and misconduct; however, this has rarely been studied in veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom. The objective of this study was to investigate whether psychological problems were associated with three types of misconduct outc...

Conflict of interest: none. In an editorial on scientific misconduct, Glina points out two important issues: the pressure to publish for attainment of academic positions, and the difficulty of detecting fraud in scientific research(1). The editorial agrees with our experience in Russia, where no articles have been retracted so far. During the 1990s, detection of scientific misconduct seemed to ...

OBJECTIVES To study and describe how a group of senior researchers and a group of postgraduate students perceived the so-called "grey zone" between normal scientific practice and obvious misconduct. DESIGN A questionnaire concerning various practices including dishonesty and obvious misconduct. The answers were obtained by means of a visual analogue scale (VAS). The central (two quarters) of ...

author (which had been accepted but not yet published) that also seemed to be plagiarised. However, the author’s hospital did not respond. In another of the four cases (09-11), an editor had concerns about the ethics of a trial of a homoeopathic treatment for HIV/AIDS. The editor was concerned that patients may have been denied effective antiretroviral treatment and wanted clarification about h...

This paper looks at Texas tort law reform to make claims regarding the relationship between Texas tort reform and damages recovered. Starting with reform in 1977, Texas has passed 15 pieces of legislation that, in principle, restrict the damages plaintiffs recover. Most empirical analyses have focused primarily on analyzing behavior resulting from the tort reform. In other cases, research has l...

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Scientists who have come face to face with scientific misconduct consider its consequences years later.