{"id":459,"date":"2006-12-04T13:52:05","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T11:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/2006\/12\/04\/prevention-of-fraud\/"},"modified":"2006-12-09T21:42:14","modified_gmt":"2006-12-09T19:42:14","slug":"prevention-of-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2006\/12\/prevention-of-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Prevention of fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Kennedy is writing in this week&#8217; Science editorial about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/cgi\/content\/summary\/314\/5804\/1353\">Responding to Fraud<\/a>. The editorial is even more about prevention of fraud: The external reviewers ask for future risk assessment of potential fraud. Science will think in the future<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8230; which papers deserve particularly careful editorial scrutiny. Papers that are of substantial public interest, present results that are unexpected and\/or counterintuitive, or touch on areas of high political controversy may fall into this category&#8230;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I appreciate such an initiative and I agree that science is based on an assumption of trust &#8211; no procedure will be immune to deliberate fraud. However, looking both at people and at papers could be worthwile. I would give extra score points for<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>too ambitious institutional environments<\/li>\n<li>large and anonymous organizations<\/li>\n<li>poor social and scientific interaction at a local level<\/li>\n<li>limited scientific qualification or background of researchers or department heads<\/li>\n<li>time pressure, too many projects, no longterm goals<\/li>\n<li>direct financial compensation in return of scientific impact<\/li>\n<li>past history of minor misconduct<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Looking at papers will also reveal inconsistencies<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>contradictory numbers<\/li>\n<li>suspicious modifications of  figures<\/li>\n<li>original data not public available<\/li>\n<li>original documentation not public available<\/li>\n<li>constructs, cell lines, animals not public available<\/li>\n<li>inadequate point by point response to review<\/li>\n<li>insufficient documentation of IRB and authorship<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another option is to pay reviewers &#8211; the review process is becoming more and more time consuming &#8211; and even to plan on-site evaluation. An option probably not feasible is to delay publication until the main findings are independently reproduced.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I see a large gap between the attempts of Science and Nature to improve their performance while some average impact journals never respond if you ask them to correct or withdraw a highly distorted paper. Yea, yea.<\/p>\n<h3>Addendum<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/pub_releases\/2006-12\/cose-gtp120706.php\">Guide to promoting integrity in scientific journals published by the Council of Science Editors<\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"bottom-note\">\n  <span class=\"mod1\">CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 09.04.2026<\/span>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Kennedy is writing in this week&#8217; Science editorial about Responding to Fraud. The editorial is even more about prevention of fraud: The external reviewers ask for future risk assessment of potential fraud. Science will think in the future &#8230; which papers deserve particularly careful editorial scrutiny. Papers that are of substantial public interest, present &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2006\/12\/prevention-of-fraud\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Prevention of fraud<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2946,361,356,358,359,357,362,355,360],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-of-science","tag-philosophy-of-science","tag-contradictory","tag-deliberate_fraud","tag-institutional_environments","tag-political_controversy","tag-prevention_of_fraud","tag-risk_assessment","tag-science_editorial","tag-score_points"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}