{"id":48798,"date":"2019-07-25T03:34:34","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T10:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=48798"},"modified":"2019-07-25T03:34:34","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T10:34:34","slug":"fudged-research-results-erode-peoples-trust-in-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/fudged-research-results-erode-peoples-trust-in-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"Fudged research results erode people\u2019s trust in experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nReports of\u00a0research misconduct<\/a>\u00a0have been prominent recently and probably reflect wider problems of relying on dated integrity protections.<\/p>\n

The recent reports are from\u00a0Retraction Watch<\/a>, which is a blog that reports on the withdrawal of articles by academic journals. The site\u2019s\u00a0database<\/a>\u00a0reports that journals have withdrawn a total of 247 papers with an Australian author going back to the 1980s.<\/p>\n

This compares with 324 papers withdrawn with Canadian authors, 582 from the UK and 24 from New Zealand. Australian retractions are 0.01% of all retractions reported on the site, a fraction of Australia\u2019s 4% share of all research publications.<\/p>\n

Australian retractions have fallen from around 25 a year when Retraction Watch was launched in 2010 to an average of 11 in each of 2018 and 2017. This is in line with all retractions falling from 5,108 in 2010 to an average of 660 in the last two years.<\/p>\n

Scratching the surface<\/h4>\n

But this is not a good indication of trends in research cheating. Probably only a modest proportion of all flawed publications are\u00a0identified and retracted<\/a>. There can be a delay of several years before research problems are found, reported and verified.<\/p>\n

Common reasons for retracting articles include duplicating results, errors in results or analysis, and plagiarism. Other reasons include falsification or fabrication of data, research misconduct and unreliable research.<\/p>\n

But not all retractions are for nefarious reasons. One publisher\u00a0retracted a paper<\/a>\u00a0because it had through misunderstanding published the wrong version of the paper on its website. It promptly published the right version once its mistake had been noticed.<\/p>\n

Research misconduct is a\u00a0long-standing problem<\/a>. The\u00a0Piltdown Man hoax<\/a>\u00a0in which the hoaxer claimed to have discovered the \u201cmissing link\u201d between apes and humans was perpetrated back in 1912.<\/p>\n

And research misconduct can have serious consequences. Opposition to vaccination is bolstered by a\u00a0fraudulent paper<\/a>\u00a0claiming a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism and bowel disease, which was published in 1998.<\/p>\n

It is hard to argue for evidence-based\u00a0policy<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0practice<\/a>\u00a0if there are serious doubts about the quality of the evidence. Even where there is no cheating, confidence in all research is undermined by the\u00a0replication crisis<\/a>\u00a0in which researchers can\u2019t repeat earlier findings.<\/p>\n

Misconduct undermines science<\/h4>\n

Reports of research misconduct strengthen the\u00a0denial of science<\/a>\u00a0and undermine the argument for taking concerted action to manage\u00a0climate change<\/a>\u00a0and other problems.<\/p>\n

Reports of\u00a0research misconduct<\/a>\u00a0are coinciding with reports of student\u00a0academic misconduct<\/a>, mostly\u00a0plagiarism<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0contract cheating<\/a>\u00a0where a student pays another to complete their assessment.<\/p>\n

The stresses on\u00a0researcher<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0student<\/a>\u00a0malefactors are probably similar. They are the pressures to succeed in an increasing competitive environment. As societies become more unequal there are much higher rewards for apparent success and bigger penalties for failure.<\/p>\n

Academic misconduct also likely reflects the contemporary conditions of universities, which are increasingly expected to be\u00a0businesslike<\/a>\u00a0in managing their greatly increased resources.<\/p>\n

Much higher student-to-staff ratios make it much harder to develop the close and supportive relations between teachers and students that discourage\u00a0cheating<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tackling the problem<\/h4>\n

Universities are responding by increasing their\u00a0regulation and oversight<\/a>of academic activities. They are using\u00a0software to detect cheating<\/a>, but this is not a\u00a0full solution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Australian government established the\u00a0Australian Research Integrity Committee<\/a>\u00a0in 2011, but it\u00a0has limitations<\/a>. It reviews institutions\u2019 responses to allegations of research misconduct, which in turn integrate institutions\u2019 academic integrity policies, employees\u2019 contracts and institutions\u2019 disciplinary policies and enterprise agreements.<\/p>\n

The fundamental problem is that the traditional systems for ensuring researcher and student integrity are based on the trust that is built from personal interactions within a much smaller system. They are also based on the volunteerism of the less formal traditional scholarly community for refereeing grant applications and journal submissions.<\/p>\n

More systematic and rigorous processes will probably be needed as higher education transitions to universal access and wholesale research. As processes are formalised the costs of refereeing submissions may no longer be hidden in experts\u2019 voluntary contributions to their community of scholars. They are likely to be professionalised, and costed and paid for explicitly.<\/p>\n

Academics\u2019 relations with most undergraduate students and with most researchers will become more formal. Sadly, academics will likely have to trust less their students and other researchers. Even collaborating researchers have been caught by the failures of co-authors in the parts of the research and writing they were responsible for.<\/p>\n

Conversely, much of what students and researchers have done on trust will have to be checked by new systems introduced by institutions, research granting bodies and publishers. Most students and researchers will experience far more bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

The failures of academic integrity of students and researchers may be only a fraction of all work by scholars. But they so corrode trust in academic qualifications and publications that stringent measures will be needed to protect academic integrity. Hopefully those measures will be more preventive than punitive.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Gavin Moodie is an Adjunct Professor, at RMIT University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports of\u00a0research misconduct\u00a0have been prominent recently and probably reflect wider problems of relying on dated integrity protections. The recent reports are from\u00a0Retraction Watch, which is a blog that reports on the withdrawal of articles by academic journals. The site\u2019s\u00a0database\u00a0reports that journals have withdrawn a total of 247 papers with an Australian author going back to […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":48799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86115],"tags":[295343],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-48798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-misconduct"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFudged research results erode people\u2019s trust in experts - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/fudged-research-results-erode-peoples-trust-in-experts\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fudged research results erode people\u2019s trust in experts - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Reports of\u00a0research misconduct\u00a0have been prominent recently and probably reflect wider problems of relying on dated integrity protections. 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