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      Research Integrity Among PhD Students at the Faculty of Medicine: A Comparison of Three Scandinavian Universities

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          Abstract

          This study investigates research integrity among PhD students in health sciences at three universities in Scandinavia (Stockholm, Oslo, Odense). A questionnaire with questions on knowledge, attitudes, experiences, and behavior was distributed to PhD students and obtained a response rate of 77.7%. About 10% of the respondents agreed that research misconduct strictly defined (such as fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, FFP) is common in their area of research, while slightly more agreed that other forms of misconduct is common. A nonnegligible segment of the respondents was willing to fabricate, falsify, or omit contradicting data if they believe that they are right in their overall conclusions. Up to one third reported to have added one or more authors unmerited. Results showed a negative correlation between “good attitudes” and self-reported misconduct and a positive correlation between how frequent respondents thought that misconduct occurs and whether they reported misconduct themselves. This reveals that existing educational and research systems partly fail to foster research integrity.

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          Scientists behaving badly.

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            Misconduct Policies, Academic Culture and Career Stage, Not Gender or Pressures to Publish, Affect Scientific Integrity

            The honesty and integrity of scientists is widely believed to be threatened by pressures to publish, unsupportive research environments, and other structural, sociological and psychological factors. Belief in the importance of these factors has inspired major policy initiatives, but evidence to support them is either non-existent or derived from self-reports and other sources that have known limitations. We used a retrospective study design to verify whether risk factors for scientific misconduct could predict the occurrence of retractions, which are usually the consequence of research misconduct, or corrections, which are honest rectifications of minor mistakes. Bibliographic and personal information were collected on all co-authors of papers that have been retracted or corrected in 2010-2011 (N=611 and N=2226 papers, respectively) and authors of control papers matched by journal and issue (N=1181 and N=4285 papers, respectively), and were analysed with conditional logistic regression. Results, which avoided several limitations of past studies and are robust to different sampling strategies, support the notion that scientific misconduct is more likely in countries that lack research integrity policies, in countries where individual publication performance is rewarded with cash, in cultures and situations were mutual criticism is hampered, and in the earliest phases of a researcher’s career. The hypothesis that males might be prone to scientific misconduct was not supported, and the widespread belief that pressures to publish are a major driver of misconduct was largely contradicted: high-impact and productive researchers, and those working in countries in which pressures to publish are believed to be higher, are less-likely to produce retracted papers, and more likely to correct them. Efforts to reduce and prevent misconduct, therefore, might be most effective if focused on promoting research integrity policies, improving mentoring and training, and encouraging transparent communication amongst researchers.
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              Ranking major and minor research misbehaviors: results from a survey among participants of four World Conferences on Research Integrity

              Background Codes of conduct mainly focus on research misconduct that takes the form of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. However, at the aggregate level, lesser forms of research misbehavior may be more important due to their much higher prevalence. Little is known about what the most frequent research misbehaviors are and what their impact is if they occur. Methods A survey was conducted among 1353 attendees of international research integrity conferences. They were asked to score 60 research misbehaviors according to their views on and perceptions of the frequency of occurrence, preventability, impact on truth (validity), and impact on trust between scientists on 5-point scales. We expressed the aggregate level impact as the product of frequency scores and truth, trust and preventability scores, respectively. We ranked misbehaviors based on mean scores. Additionally, relevant demographic and professional background information was collected from participants. Results Response was 17% of those who were sent the invitational email and 33% of those who opened it. The rankings suggest that selective reporting, selective citing, and flaws in quality assurance and mentoring are viewed as the major problems of modern research. The “deadly sins” of fabrication and falsification ranked highest on the impact on truth but low to moderate on aggregate level impact on truth, due to their low estimated frequency. Plagiarism is thought to be common but to have little impact on truth although it ranked high on aggregate level impact on trust. Conclusions We designed a comprehensive list of 60 major and minor research misbehaviors. Our respondents were much more concerned over sloppy science than about scientific fraud (FFP). In the fostering of responsible conduct of research, we recommend to develop interventions that actively discourage the high ranking misbehaviors from our study. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s41073-016-0024-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics
                J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics
                JRE
                spjre
                Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics
                SAGE Publications (Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA )
                1556-2646
                1556-2654
                12 June 2020
                October 2020
                : 15
                : 4
                : 320-329
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik, Norway
                [2 ]University of Oslo, Norway
                [3 ]University Library of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
                [4 ]Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
                [5 ]University of Manchester, UK
                Author notes
                [*]Bjørn Hofmann, Department of Health Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 191, NO-2802 Gjøvik, Norway. Email: bjoern.hofmann@ 123456ntnu.no
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6709-4265
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4633-9838
                Article
                10.1177_1556264620929230
                10.1177/1556264620929230
                7488824
                32532174
                0c298dd6-fc6c-40a9-9a97-0fabd980ea7e
                © The Author(s) 2020

                This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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                Categories
                Empirical Studies on Research Integrity and Research Misconduct
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                ts1

                doctoral students,misconduct,integrity,attitudes,knowledge,practice,science ethics

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