Every so often, the scientific community finds cases where fraudulent data or results are used to help publish articles in journals and advance a scientist’s career. With grant money, tenure, and career advancement at risk for scientists it is no surprise that individuals in high pressure environments make ethically void decisions without regard to the effects of these practices on the scientific community as a whole. Recently, Fei Wang of the Kanazawa University in Japan admitted to altering data in his 2010 paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
As reported by BioTechniques today, “In less than two years, the paper has been cited by more than 20 times, according to Google Scholar. As a result of the paper, S1P has become a new potential therapeutic target…”meaning that thousands of dollars have been spent on research based in part on this paper’s findings. Furthermore, there should now be a legitimate evaluation of whether this research should be continued or abandoned.
Cases like these raise many questions. What should the requirements be for a journal to publish a study? We use peer-review as a filter to determine that a study is legitimate, however a savvy enough scientist could manipulate data to alter results enough to pass the peer-review process. As BioTechniques.com points out that, in this case Fei Wang was unable to provide raw data to the journal. Should journals require verification of raw data, the publication process will be further extended as the scientific community tries to legitimize findings.
What is the solution? How does the scientific community increase transparency without slowing down the process? While new technologies like video recording and electronic data-collection services provide methods to verify data and procedures, these technologies are far from tamper-proof. An amnesty policy accepted and encouraged by research institutions and journals, could allow scientists aware of data tampering to come forward and report practices without a chance of retaliation. Is it time for the much discussed but wildly unspoken “publish or perish” practices by large research universities be addressed and re-worked. Regardless of the concrete solution, the issue must be addressed to maintain the integrity of the scientific community and the image of the journals that publish such articles.
So how should the scientific community address this issue? Write your suggestions in the comments to help get the conversation rolling!