Research Misconduct & Publishing Ethics

Presented by: Jaap van Harten, PhD, Executive Publisher Elsevier BV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Location: Laval University, Québec City, Canada Date: September 22, 2014

Why are you here?

A few examples – The Netherlands

René Diekstra

Don Poldermans

A few examples – The Netherlands

Diederik Stapel

A few examples – Canada

A few examples -- International

Anil Potti (Duke University)

Zu Guttenberg

Woo-suk Hwang (Seoul National University)

Pons & Fleischman

Research Misconduct & Publishing Ethics

Outline • Misconduct: what it is • Size of the problem • Detection tools • How publishers handle misconduct cases • Costs of misconduct • Why misconduct? • How to prevent misconduct? • Example: “Poldermans case”

What do researchers want ? -- As authors and as readers

Authors Readers Ownership X Certification (“quality stamped”) X X Dissemination X Accessibility X Navigation (browsing/indexing) X Archiving (access “forever”) X X

Where are we talking about?

• Scientific misconduct

• Publication misconduct

Publishing ethics -- subjective or objective?

• International scientific ethics has evolved over centuries, and are commonly held throughout the world.

• Scientific ethics is not considered to have national “flavours” – Single ethics standard

for science

Most common ethics issues

Sample of cases reported to Elsevier publishing staff in 2010

Cases by type (%)

Ethics Issues in Publishing

Scientific misconduct – Fabrication -- Making up research data – Falsification -- Manipulation of existing research data – Improper use of humans or animals in research

Publication misconduct

– Plagiarism • Different forms / severities • The paper must be original to the authors

– Duplicate publication – Duplicate submission – Appropriate acknowledgement of prior research and

researchers – Appropriate identification of all co-authors – Conflict of interest

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often go hand in hand

Data fabrication Fabrication

• Making up data or results, and recording or reporting them

“… the fabrication of research data … hits at the heart of our responsibility to society, the reputation of our institution, the trust between the public and the biomedical research community, and our personal credibility and that of our mentors, colleagues…”

“It can waste the time of others, trying to replicate false data or designing experiments based on false premises, and can lead to therapeutic errors. It can never be tolerated.”

Professor Richard Hawkes Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy

University of Calgary

Falsification • Manipulation of research materials,

equipment, processes, etc. • Change in, or omission of data or

results in such a manner that the research is not accurately represented in the research record

“Select data to fit a preconceived hypothesis: • We do not include (data from) an experiment because ‘it did not work’, or • We show ‘representative’ images that do not reflect the total data set, or • We simply shelve data that do not fit.”

Richard Hawkes

Data falsification

Figure Manipulation

Figure Manipulation – Example Different authors and experiments

Am J Pathol, 2001

Life Sci, 2004

Life Sci, 2004 Rotated 180o

Rotated 180o Zoomed out ?!

Figure manipulation

Figure Manipulation – Example Same manuscript, different experiments

Control Condition 1 Condition 2 Condition 3

Figure Manipulation – Example Same manuscript, different experiments

Control Condition 1 Condition 2 Condition 3

Figure Manipulation – Example Same manuscript, different experiments

Figure Manipulation – Example

Improper use of humans or animals

• When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration. – If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance

with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

• When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be

asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

No manuscript will be considered unless this information is supplied.

Plagiarism “Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit, including those obtained through confidential review of others’ research proposals and manuscripts.”

Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy, 1999 “Presenting the data or interpretations of others without crediting them, and thereby gaining for yourself the rewards earned by others, is theft, and it eliminates the motivation of working scientists to generate new data and interpretations.”

Professor Bruce Railsback Department of Geology, University of Georgia

M. Errami & H. Garner A tale of two citations Nature 451 (2008): 397-399

Plagiarism

• Different forms • Stealing data • Stealing words / phrases • Stealing ideas

• Different severities

• 5 lines? 5 paragraphs? 5 pages? full article? • Taken from results, methods or introduction section? • Taken from others’ or own previous work?

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Publication ethics – Self-plagiarism

Same colour left and right

Same text

2003 2004

To do: paraphrasing

• Make sure that you really understand what the original author means. Never copy and paste any words that you do not fully understand.

• Think about how the essential ideas of the source relate to your own work, until you can deliver the information to others without referring to the source.

• Compare you paraphrasing with the source, to see – whether you change the wording and

the structure sufficiently – whether the true meaning of the source

is retained.

Duplicate Publication

Two or more papers, without full cross-reference, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points and/or conclusions Re-publication (or simultaneous publication) is unacceptable, unless agreed in advance by the publishers of the two journals, e.g. • Combined editorials

– e.g. about a plagiarism case involving the two journals • (Clinical) guidelines, Position statements, etc. • Translations of articles

– Provided that prior approval has been granted by the first Publisher, and that full and prominent disclosure of its original source at the time of submission

At the time of submission, authors must disclose details of related papers (also when in a different language), similar papers in press, and translations

Duplicate Submission

Submission is not permitted as long as a manuscript is under review with another journal

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Acknowledgement of prior research and researchers

If not done, then it’s plagiarism

• Policies regarding authorship can vary. • One example: the International Committee of Medical Journal

Editors (“Vancouver Group”) declared that an author must: 1. substantially contribute to conception and design, or

acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2. draft the article or revise it critically for important

intellectual content; and 3. give their approval of the final full version to be published. 4. ALL 3 conditions must be fulfilled to be an author!

• All other contributors to be listed in “Acknowledgements” Beware of

– Ghost Authors • Authors who should have been included

– Gift Authors • Authors who did not contribute significantly

Authorship

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest can take many forms – Direct financial

• Employment, stock ownership, grants, patents – Indirect financial

• Honoraria, consultancies, mutual fund ownership, expert testimony – Career & intellectual

• Promotion, direct rivals – Institutional – Personal beliefs

• The proper way to handle potential conflicts of interest is through

transparency and disclosure • At the journal level, this means disclosure of the potential conflict in your

cover letter to the journal editor, and sometimes in the article

How big is the problem?

“Up to 200,000 of 17,000,000 articles in Medline database (1.2%) may be duplicates, or plagiarized”

M. Errami & H. Garner Nature 451 (2008) 397-399

Increasing number of cases? Or just

Better detection methods? More publicity?

M. Errami & H. Garner A tale of two citations Nature 451 (2008): 397-399

Is it this bad?

PLoS Med 2(8): e124 [August 2005]

Or underreported?

“There are enough known or emerging cases [of misconduct] to suggest that the UK’s apparent shortage of publicly investigated examples has more to do with a closed, competitive, and fearful academic culture than with Britain’s researchers being uniquely honest.”

F. Godlee & E. Wager Research misconduct in the UK. Time to act.

BMJ 344:d8357 [Jan. 2012]

% of respondents Observed misconduct 55.7% Past personal misconduct 5.7% Future possible misconduct 18.0%

Retractions are on the rise ...

Irreproducible results

N A T U R E | V O L 4 7 8 | 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 | 2 6 – 2 8

Freely available • eTBLAST • Chimpsky • CitePlag • CopyTracker • Plagium • SeeSources • Plagiarism Checker • Plagiarism Detect • Déjà vu

What tools are out there?

Commercial products • Attributor • Copyscape • CrossCheck, Turnitin • Plagiarismdetect • PlagScan • Veriguide

Detection of Plagiarism and Fraud

• Elsevier is participating in 2 plagiarism detection schemes

– iThenticate’s Turnitin (for universities) & CrossCheck (for publishers and corporations)

– Manuscripts are checked against a database of 20 million peer reviewed articles which have been donated by 50+ publishers, including Elsevier.

– All post-1994 Elsevier journal content is included, and pre-1995 content is being added week-by-week

• Editors and reviewers • Your own colleagues • "Other“ whistleblowers

– “The walls have ears", it seems ...

CrossCheck

What is a fair sanction?

- It is ultimately the Editor’s decision, with advice from the Publisher

- Bans/”blacklisting”? - Contrary to traditions of freedom of expression,

anti-censorship - After 2+ chances, perhaps reasonable for Editor to

conclude that further consideration is waste of resources

- COPE advises against bans

- Informing the author’s institute? - Article retraction?

Costs of misconduct Researchers who Committed Fraud or Plagiarism • Article correction, retraction or removal • Loss of job, PhD degree or professorship • Loss of grants • Lawsuits • Reputation damage

Institution • Reputation damage • Lawsuits • Case investigation costs • Loss of grants

– Already spent – Less grant income due to reputation damage institution

Adapted from “The True Costs of Research Misconduct”

2012 iThenticate Report

Costs of misconduct

Other Researchers • Building Future Research on Wrong Published Data Patients • Misdiagnosis • Wrong treatment decisions

Adapted from “The True Costs of Research Misconduct”

2012 iThenticate Report

Why • Research culture of “Publish or perish” (or “Publish and still perish”?)

– “Winner takes all” • Grants are concentrated among a small of scientists

– “Priority rule” percentage • All credits to scientists who are the first to publish

– Workforce imbalance • Limited “upward” career perspectives

• Social culture • Institutional culture • Personality and personal ethics

– Lazy – Ambitious – Risk-taking – Vain

PhD students

Postdocs

Research scientists

PI’s / Professors

In part taken from A. Casadevall & F.C. Fang Reforming Science: Methodological and Cultural Reforms

Infect Immun 80 (2012) 891-896

Dear [other editors], See the link to the retraction note for a paper in [journal]. It shows what the consequences of misconduct are. Another paper from the same authors was on hold, and has been now been rejected. Hopefully also university administrators will learn from this, as they are pushing scientists to the limit to publish, publish, publish,….. scientists are not writing for administrators but for their colleagues in the field!

Email of a journal editor to co-editors, 2012

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Who are responsible for “ethics”?

All stakeholders

• Publishers

• Authors • Their colleagues • Institutions • Funding bodies • Journal editors

Scientific community

Prevention is better than cure

Publishers

• Clear policy statement in all Guides for Authors • At the time of submission, authors must confirm

that they have complied with ethics guidelines • CrossCheck plagiarism detection • Workshops

• Authors, reviewers, policy makers

• Educational campaigns • Educational or frightening, or both?

www.elsevier.com/wps/find/editorshome.editors/introduction

www.publicationethics.org.uk/about

A role for the science community?

• “Ethics” an integral part of education • Otherwise malignant or naïve researchers will continue to fuel

research and publishing misconduct • Misconduct no longer tolerated

• Too often direct colleagues know about misconduct • But they keep quiet about it • In such environments misconduct can be contagious

• A safe whistleblower environment • E.g. Office of Research Integrity

• No rewards for misconduct, but effective (and fair) sanctions • Face and solve the cases

“Poldermans” case

A role for the science community?

Sounds logic, and simple ... but, we’re not there yet.

Make a difference!

Thank you! Questions welcome

j.harten@elsevier.com