The U.S. government’s Office of Research Integrity regards the core issues of scientific misconduct as:
a. lying, cheating, and stealing
b. fabricating, falsifying, and fraternizing
c. fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism
d. inappropriate methods, inaccurate results, dishonest conclusions
The correct answer and explanation is:
The correct answer is c. fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.
The U.S. government’s Office of Research Integrity (ORI) defines scientific misconduct based on three main issues: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. These represent unethical behaviors that can seriously undermine the integrity of the scientific process and research findings. Let’s break down each term:
- Fabrication refers to making up data or results and recording or reporting them as if they were real. This is a deliberate act of dishonesty, where a researcher creates false data or results that did not actually occur during the experiment or study. For instance, if a researcher reports results from an experiment they never conducted, it constitutes fabrication.
- Falsification involves manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data to make the research findings appear more favorable or accurate than they actually are. An example of falsification would be altering the data in a way that misrepresents the actual outcomes of an experiment.
- Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work, ideas, or intellectual property without proper acknowledgment. In research, plagiarism can include copying text, data, or conclusions from another researcher’s work and presenting it as one’s own. This is considered a severe violation because it disregards the original creator’s intellectual property rights and undermines the trust in scholarly communication.
Scientific misconduct compromises the validity of research findings and can lead to significant harm in fields such as medicine, engineering, and public policy, where decisions based on research outcomes directly affect people’s lives. Institutions and journals take these matters seriously, and allegations of misconduct often result in severe consequences, including the retraction of published papers, loss of research funding, and damage to the reputation of the individuals involved.