Science magazine, Landmark research integrity survey finds questionable practices are surprisingly common, 2021

More than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature, according to a new study. And one in 12 admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3 years: the fabrication or falsification of research results.

Full text: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...uestionable-practices-are-surprisingly-common

 

Depressing findings, but I wonder what those figures would be for BPS researchers looking at ME/CFS, FND, MUS, Long Covid, etc.

[added - what is the impact of using subjective self reporting in surveys of research malpractice and scientific fraud on the results. Would objective outcome measures been better science?]

 

I suspect there is less fraud in the BPS literature on ME/CFS because the authors can use many other techniques to fabricate positive findings, that are accepted by journal editors such as a waiting list control group or manipulating how patients report their symptoms etc.
So there would be less need to commit outright fraud or other questionable practices.

Fabrication of results usually results in findings that look too good to be true. In ME/CFS, findings look too bad to be fabricated.

 

Some of the most questionable research practices in the survey were "“Not submitting or resubmitting valid negative studies for publication" and “Insufficient inclusion of study flaws and limitations in publications". I suspect these are quite prevalent in the BPS literature on ME/CFS.

 

Makes you wonder - why would scientists own up?

 

Doing good research is hard, and almost involves setting yourself up to fail, and the incentives to publish research and pressure of the environment make this not particularly surprising.

In the context of ME/CFS, designing a good trial of unblinded treatments would be very difficult, involve a lot of groundwork, and require some pretty innovative thinking in order to account for the nature of ME/CFS and an unblinded trial. You could do all of that, and get a null result, or follow pretty much generally accepted practices in the field, and have a positive result. I assume the incentives are the same in other research fields.

 

Yes.

But sadly our world is not set up like that. Society remembers those who make new discoveries.

Correcting the record without making a new discovery is not well regarded. It’s a bit like the science equivalent of “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

If someone says X is wrong, without providing a clearly true new answer, then they are being negative. Or maybe they did something wrong in their work, because X is established truth, so it carries on being regarded as true.

Null results just aren’t exciting, so even if recorded they slide beneath society’s gaze.

 

I completely agree.

Back in the days of "honest" science, how many discoveries were made by accident though? An interested researcher realizing that although their experiment didn't show the expected result, something worth further investigation was found along the way.

 

At least double the average. Probably far higher.

 

Perhaps because they're sick of a system that they feel pressures them into behaving like that if they want to get on?

 

I suspect there is little to no outright fraud in CFS research because they know their work tends to be scrutinised with a fine tooth comb. They don’t need to fabricate data, though, to obtain desired results since they can just rig the outcome by using laughably biased outcome measures.

 

They used to cherry pick patients to get the results they want but after the clinics began I think it might have been harder for them so nowadays they just get bad results and spin them in the bits people read.

 

Here's another article about questionable research getting published.

I think this article belongs on this thread but if I'm mistaken please let me know and I'll ask moderators to move it somewhere else.

https://www.sciencealert.com/iverme...ge-wake-up-call-for-fraud-in-covid-19-science