Authenticity and accuracy - Ethics in scientific publishing - Some preliminaries

How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Authenticity and accuracy
Ethics in scientific publishing
Some preliminaries

The fact that research reported in a journal should actually have been performed may seem too obvious to mention. Yet cases exist in which an author simply made up data in a paper, without ever doing the research. Clearly, such “dry-labbing,” or fabrication, is unethical. Fiction can be a grand pursuit, but it has no place in a scientific paper.

More subtle, and probably more common, are lesser or less definite deviations from accuracy: omitting outlying points from the data reported, preparing figures in ways that accentuate the findings misleadingly, or doing other tweaking. Where to draw the line between editing and distortion may not always be apparent. If in doubt, seek guidance from a more experienced scientist in your field—perhaps one who edits a journal.

The advent of digital imaging has given unethical researchers new ways to falsify findings. (Journal editors, though, have procedures to detect cases in which such falsification of images seems probable.) And ethical researchers may rightly wonder what manipulations of digital images are and are not valid. Sources of advice in this regard include sets of guidelines for using and manipulating scientific digital images (Cromey 2010, 2012).

For research that includes statistical analysis, reporting accurately includes using appropriate statistical procedures, not those that may distort the findings. If in doubt, obtain the collaboration of a statistician. Enlist the statistician early, while you are still planning the research, to help ensure that you collect appropriate data. Otherwise, ethical problems may include wasting resources and time. In the words of R.A. Fisher (1938), “To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination.”