Research misconduct in science is merely a modern phenomena and an inseparable part in the real academic world today. It hardly existed in the early evolution of science, in particular the nineteen and twenty centuries, where science was not as what we know it today. Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford, Albert Eistein, James Clerk Maxwell, …. and many many others gave us wealth of fundamental and robust knowledge that we still use today. They have also generated enormous trusts in science, this is however is not the case today. 

Monday April 20, 2015 Suzanne Shale (Independent Ethics Consultant, Research Associate at Ethox, University of Oxford, UK) will give a talk at SciLifeLab, The Svedberg Lab, Uppsala University. The title is “Noble and Ignoble Science: The Long Fight Against Fraud and Fabrication”. In her abstract of the talk she says “In modern times research malpractice is more common than we might think”. She is also citing Sheehan’s 2007 study  revealing that 40% of the US clinical scientists were aware of scientific misconduct they have not reported (Clev Clin J Med 74: S63-7). And even Nobel laureates have come under suspicion. She will take up three recent stories of malpractice in life science to consider the boundary between what is acceptable and unacceptable, and how good scientists get tempted into bad practice (https://www.dropbox.com/s/2hreoubav48udrd/suzanne%20shale%20april%2020.pdf?dl=0)

Leading scientific journals have, also, reported that misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications (http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17028.full.pdf).

This is, also, reflected in real life as reported by JAMA Internal Medicine. According to them, research misconduct identified by US Food and Drug Administration is described by being out of sight, out of mind and even out of the Peer-Reviewed Literature.