Editors of scientific journals need to be conversant with the mechanisms by which scientific misconduct is amplified by publication practices. This paper provides definitions, ways to document the extent of the problem, and examples of editorial attempts to counter fraud. Fabrication, falsification, duplication, ghost authorship, gift authorship, lack of ethics approval, non-disclosure, 'salami...

It’s all so easy with Photoshop 1 . In the days before imaging software became so widely available, making adjustments to image data in the darkroom required considerable effort and/or expertise. It is now very simple, and thus tempting, to adjust or modify digital image files. Many such manipulations, however, constitute inappropriate changes to your original data, and making such changes can ...

Scientists are privileged. Our work and our reputations depend on trust. Like all professionals we are expected to keep our houses in order. The career of a scientist may be damaged or destroyed by discovery of misconduct, but such is not a crime against which there is recourse in courts of law. Wrong-doing in science taints the whole scientific endeavour. Here, scientific journals and their ed...

Articles may be retracted when their findings are no longer considered trustworthy due to scientific misconduct or error, they plagiarize previously published work, or they are found to violate ethical guidelines. Using a novel measure that we call the "retraction index," we found that the frequency of retraction varies among journals and shows a strong correlation with the journal impact facto...

This evidence-based opinion piece gives a short overview of the increase in retractions of publications in scientific journals and discusses various reasons for that increase. Also discussed are some of the recent prominent cases of scientific misconduct, the number of authors with multiple retractions, and problems with reproducibility of published research. Finally, some of the effects of fau...

To explore increasing concerns about scientific misconduct and data irreproducibility in some areas of science, we interviewed a number of senior biomedical researchers. These interviews revealed a perceived decline in trust in the scientific enterprise, in large part because the quantity of new data exceeds the field's ability to process it appropriately. This phenomenon-which is termed 'overf...

Although medical centres have established boards, special committees, and offices for the review and redress of breaches in ethical behaviour, these mechanisms repeatedly prove themselves ineffective in addressing research misconduct within the institutions of academic medicine. As the authors see it, institutional design: (1) systematically ignores serious ethical problems, (2) makes whistlebl...