Nine pitfalls of research misconduct

From The Embassy of Good Science
Education

Nine pitfalls of research misconduct

What is this about?

This publication is about recornising 9 factors that lead to bad decisions by researchers and can be represented by the acronym TRAGEDIES. Each letter presents one factor, which poses for a specific behavioral aspect, that leads to pitfalls when conducting and analysing research data.

Why is this important?

By recognizing these pitfalls and responding appropriately can save a career and strengthen science.

For whom is this important?

What are the best practices?

Avoid the following pitfalls (behavioral aspect with an example): (a) Temptation - “Getting my name on this article would look really good on my CV”, (b) Rationalization - “It’s only a few data points, and those runs were flawed anyway”, (c) Ambition - “The better the story we can tell, the better a journal we can go for”, (d) Group and authority pressure - “The PI’s instructions don’t exactly match the protocol approved by the ethics review board, but she is the senior researcher”, (e) Entitlement - “I’ve worked so hard on this, and I know this works, and I need to get this publication”, (f) Deception - “I’m sure it would have turned out this way (if I had done it)”, (g) Incrementalism - “It’s only a single data point I’m excluding, and just this once”, (h) Embarrassment - “I don’t want to look foolish for not knowing how to do this”, (i) Stupid systems, “It counts more if we divide this manuscript into three submissions instead of just one”.