As an ethics keynote speaker on business and healthcare, an ethics consultant and book author, I will admit that I have heard “rumblings,” but mostly private conversations, away from the podium of widespread research fraud.
Science writer Adrian Barnett in his (June 22, 2023) article, “Scientific fraud is rising, and automated systems won’t stop it. We need research detectives,” has convinced me the side conversations are true. This is troubling in the least and highly dangerous to the extreme. Could it be that data is being faked and as a result the conclusions are fabricated? The answer that is being uncovered is a resounding “Yes.” That’s bad.
The need to publish
Why would the scientific community want to turn scientists into fraudsters? It used to be a matter of “publish or perish” that drove the research and scientists to tenure and credentials. Now it has also turned to a lucrative source of funding. Adrian Barnett called it a “paper mill.” However, the story behind the story is that churning out fake or re-packaged research could be worth up to $2.5 billion per year in funding, grants and salary increases.
Not surprisingly, AI (used for good and bad) is being employed by scientists who are generating “plausible scientific data” that escapes AI scrutiny. The scientific publishing community developed tools to tackle research fraud, but the automated screening is proving insufficient.
Said Barnett in his article: “The problems with automated screening are highlighted by a new screening tool publicized last month. The tool suggested around one in three neuroscience papers might be fraudulent.”
Unfortunate, yet again, is that the tool has been shown to be itself flawed. In fact, it catches “honest research” as well as fraudulent research. It is estimated that about 44-percent of the papers that were caught as fakes, were simply, valid research papers caught in an artificial net.
According to Barnett:
“One big problem with simple screening tools is that fraudsters will quickly find workarounds. For instance, telling their clients to use their institutional email address to submit the paper.”
The need for money
It is called “a workaround” and it is where and how researchers, often in coordination with companies, find ways to circumvent the system and game that system for grants and “gifts.”
The conclusion of the experts is not a surprise: “automated tools cannot be the only line of defense.”
Ultimate research into the accuracy of the data will have to fall on human eyes and research. People must be trained to be experts at finding manipulation in the data. As there is so much money at stake, independent researchers such as Dr. Elizabeth Bik (who has single-handedly caught mountains of fraudulent science, has been attacked for doing the right thing:
“Bik’s work is a tremendous public service. However, she isn’t paid by a university or a scientific publisher. Her detective work—which has seen her face harassment and court cases—is crowd funded.”
Given the stakes, I ask as an ethics keynote speaker on business and healthcare, an ethics consultant and book author, why this issue seems to get little or no coverage – and worse, a lack of controls. An ethical investigative scientist such as Dr. Bik may be open to harassment and lawsuits, but what about 100 such paid researchers? What about an institute of real, live scientists and researchers?
Given the billions in funding given to fraudsters, why not a few million a year to weed out dishonest science and cheats? Healthcare ethics, pharma ethics and business ethics would seem to demand scrupulousness. It is not happening.
Finally, it is not hard to wonder if this fraud isn’t much like a seemingly unrelated case; the college admissions scandal. In that scandal, rich, privileged and undeserving students supplanted qualified student-athletes. There are important parallels. How many deserving scientists and their research have gone unfunded while fraudsters took money for fake studies that led the scientific community down the wrong roads?
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