This document discusses ethical issues in public health research, including definitions of scientific misconduct, types of misconduct, and infamous cases. It defines scientific misconduct as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or intentional deception in research. Types of misconduct include fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, failure to disclose conflicts of interest, and redundant publication. Notable cases include Diederik Stapel fabricating data in dozens of papers, Hwang Woo-suk falsifying human cloning research, and Andrew Wakefield fraudulently linking vaccines to autism. The document examines why misconduct occurs and how it should be managed.

1. Ethical issues in Public Health research
integrity and publication ethics
EMPHNET
Ghaiath M. A. Hussein
MBBS, MHSc. (Bioethics), PhD Researcher
Email: ghaiathme@gmail.com
Regency Hotel, Amman, Jordan
15-19 June, 2014

2. Outline
• Scientific misconduct: definition and types
• Examples of scientific misconducts
• Investigation of misconduct allegations
• Approaches to improve scientific integrity

3. Definitions of Scientific
Misconduct
• “Fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in
proposing, performing, or reviewing research,
or in reporting results” (US HHS, 2000, & 42 CFR Part 93.)
• “ [includes] piracy (the deliberate exploitation of ideas from others without
acknowledgement, plagiarism (the copying of ideas, data or text (or various
combinations of the three) without permission or acknowledgement), and
fraud (deliberate deception, usually the invention of data).” (Royal College of
Physicians, 1991)
• “Intention or gross negligence leading to falsification of the scientific
message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist.” (Danish
Committee on Scientific Dishonesty, 1992)

4. Definition of Scientific
Misconduct (2)
• UK Medical Research Council 1997
• “…means fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or deception in
proposing, carrying out or reporting results of research and
deliberate, dangerous or negligent deviations from accepted
practices in carrying out research.
• It includes failure to follow established protocols if this failure results
in unreasonable risk or harm to humans, […] and facilitating of
misconduct in research by collusion in, or concealment of, such
actions by others.
• It does not include honest error or honest differences in the design,
execution, interpretation or judgement in evaluating research
methods or results or misconduct (including gross misconduct)
unrelated to the research process.”

5. Types of research misconduct
(Adapted from: Committee on Publication Ethics. The COPE Report, 2000. 2000. &
Research Misconduct, F.J. Gilberta and A.R. Denison, 2002)
• Fabrication
• Falsification
• Plagiarism
• Failure to get ethical approval
• Not admitting that some data are missing
• Ignoring outliers without declaring it
• Not including data on side effects in a clinical trial
• Conducting research on humans without informed consent
• Publication of post hoc analyses without declaring it

6. Types of research misconduct (2)
(Adapted from: Committee on Publication Ethics. The COPE Report, 2000. 2000.
and Research Misconduct, F.J. Gilberta and A.R. Denison, 2002)
• Gift authorship
• Not attributing other authors
• Redundant publication
• Not disclosing a conflict of interest
• Not attempting to publish completed research
• Failure to do an adequate search of existing research before
beginning new research

7. Types of research misconduct (2)
(Adapted from: Committee on Publication Ethics. The COPE Report, 2000. 2000.
and Research Misconduct, F.J. Gilberta and A.R. Denison, 2002)
• Gift authorship
• Not attributing other authors
• Redundant publication: “Shotgunning” & “Salami-slicing”
• Not disclosing a conflict of interest
• Not attempting to publish completed research
• Failure to do an adequate search of existing research before
beginning new research

8. Basic definitions
Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR):
“… conducting research in ways that fulfill the professional
responsibilities of researchers, as defined by their professional
organizations, the institutions for which they work and, when
relevant, the government and public.” (Steneck, Science and Engineering Ethics (2006)
12, 53-74 )
• Fabrication: is making up data or results and recording or reporting
them.
• Falsification: is manipulating research materials, equipment, or
processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the
research is not accurately represented in the research record.
• Plagiarism: is the appropriation of another person's ideas,
processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit.
(Adapted from: Research misconduct: the poisoning of the well, Richard Smith, J R Soc Med May
2006 vol. 99 no. 5232-237)

9. Basic definitions
(Adapted from: Research misconduct: the poisoning of the well, Richard Smith, J R Soc
Med May 2006 vol. 99 no. 5232-237, and
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/research_integrity/research_misconduct.htm
• Fabrication: is making up data or results and recording or reporting
them.
– Example: In order to meet recruitment pressure and expectations, a study
coordinator completed trial enrollment forms using faked names and
participants' information.
– Eric Poehlman made up patients' data that never existed to support his
scientific claims.
• Falsification: is manipulating research materials, equipment, or
processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the
research is not accurately represented in the research record.
– Example: 'splicing and pasting' together different segments of western blot
images so that the final image presented appeared to have come from a
single western blot procedure.
– Harvard investigator Marc Hauser was found to have fabricated and
manipulated research results.

10. Plagiarism
(Pearson Prentice Hall, understanding Plagiarism, URL:
http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_understand_plagiarism_1/6/1668/427065.cw/index.html)
• Plagiarism: is the appropriation of another person's ideas,
processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit.
• Some obvious examples:
– copying someone else's paper.
– taking short or long quotations from a source without identifying the source.
– turning in a paper you bought over the Internet.
• Some less-obvious examples :
• changing a few words around and pretending those words are your own.
• rearranging the order of ideas in a list and making the reader think you produced
the list.
• borrowing ideas from a source and not giving proper credit to the source.
• using information from an interview or an online chat or email, etc., without
properly citing the source of the information.

11. Infamous cases of scientific
misconduct (1)
• Diederik Stapel, a leading Dutch social psychologist was found
to have:
• fabricated or manipulated information in dozens of research
papers over almost a decade,
• “several dozens of publications” in which false information was
used.
• 14/21 PhD theses Stapel supervised are also marred
• Many of his students graduated without ever running an
experiment, according to the report.
• Stapel told them that they were better off spending their time
researching and analysing data.

12. Infamous cases of scientific
misconduct (2)
• 1999-2002: He claimed to have cloned a cow & a pig
• 2004: claimed cloning the first human embryos and
to have extracted stem cells from them.
• 2006: he was charged him with:
– Embezzling US$3 million,
– Committing fraud by knowingly using fabricated
data to apply for research funds
– Violating a bioethics law that outlaws the
purchase of eggs for research
He lost his licence to conduct embryonic
stem-cell research and was fired by the
university

13. Infamous cases of scientific
misconduct (3)
• Thiruchelvam, a former assistant
professor fabricated stereological
cell count data in two studies on
how pesticides influence neuronal
mechanisms involved in
Parkinson’s disease (PD).
• The studies reported the results of
13 new experiments that were
never taken.
• The papers slated for retraction
• The false data were used to create
several summary bar graphs, which
Thiruchelvam modified to support
the hypothesis

14. Other Infamous cases of
scientific misconduct
• Toad--Paul Kammerer, called the next Darwin, unveiled in the
1920’s an amazing discovery that the offspring of Midwife Toads
inherited black spots. A closer examination revealed the spots
were, in fact, hand painted with black ink.
• Autism Vaccines--Andrew Wakefield published "results" from a
study of 12 children that appeared to link autism with vaccines.
In 2011 the British Medical Journal declared the study not a case
of bad science, but of outright fraud.
• Obesity -- Eric Poehlman, a researcher with $2.9 million of US
federal grant money, was convicted in 2005 of falsifying data in
various studies on obesity. Having “violated the public trust”, he
was sentenced to jail--the first for a US scientist for lying on a
grant application.

15. Two key issues for discussion
Why does research
misconduct happen?
How to manage Research
misconduct?

16. References
• Committee on Publication Ethics. The COPE Report, 2000.
2000.
• Research Misconduct, F.J. Gilberta and A.R. Denison, 2002
• Steneck, Science and Engineering Ethics (2006) 12, 53-74
• Research misconduct: the poisoning of the well, Richard
Smith, J R Soc Med May 2006 vol. 99 no. 5232-237
• Pearson Prentice Hall, understanding Plagiarism, URL:
http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_understand_plagiarism_1/6/166
8/427065.cw/index.html