---
title: "Scientific misconduct"
chunk: 1/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:27:42.017412+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Scientific misconduct is the violation of ethical and professional standards in research, including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and other practices that compromise the integrity of the design, conduct, analysis, reporting, or publication of scientific or research findings.

== Basic definitions and urgency of dealing with misconduct ==
Various research ethics bodies provide definitions of scientific misconduct. For example, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) defines research misconduct to include (any of) fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.
A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions, reproduced in The COPE report 1999:

Danish definition: "Intention or gross negligence leading to fabrication of the scientific message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist"
Swedish definition: "Intention[al] distortion of the research process by fabrication of data, text, hypothesis, or methods from another researcher's manuscript form or publication; or distortion of the research process in other ways."
Scientific misconduct can harm the credibility of the research record, damage careers, and undermine public trust in science. It may also affect other researchers who rely on falsified or fabricated findings. Additionally, it can harm individuals who expose it.  In addition there are public health implications attached to the promotion of medical or other interventions based on false or fabricated research findings. Scientific misconduct can result in loss of public trust in the integrity of science.
Three percent of the 3,475 research institutions that report to the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity (ORI) indicate some form of scientific misconduct. However the ORI will only investigate allegations of impropriety where research was funded by federal grants. They routinely monitor such research publications for red flags and their investigation is subject to a statute of limitations. Other private organizations like the Committee of Medical Journal Editors (COJE) can only police their own members.
A 2025 study from Northwestern University found that "the publication of fraudulent science is outpacing the growth rate of legitimate scientific publications". The study also discovered broad networks of organized scientific fraudsters.

== Forms ==
The U.S. National Science Foundation defines three types of research misconduct: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.

Fabrication is making up results and recording or reporting them.  This is sometimes referred to as "drylabbing". A more minor form of fabrication is where references are included to give arguments the appearance of widespread acceptance, but are actually fake, or do not support the argument.
Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. One form is the appropriation of the ideas and results of others, and publishing as to make it appear the author had performed all the work under which the data was obtained. There are recognized subsets of plagiarism:
Citation plagiarism involves failure to credit relevant prior work and can, in some cases, be considered research misconduct when done intentionally to misrepresent priority or originality. This is also known as, "citation amnesia", the "disregard syndrome" and "bibliographic negligence". Arguably, this is the most common type of scientific misconduct. Sometimes it is difficult to guess whether authors intentionally ignored a highly relevant cite or lacked knowledge of the prior work.  Discovery credit can also be inadvertently reassigned from the original discoverer to a better-known researcher. This is a special case of the Matthew effect.
Plagiarism-fabrication is the act of mislabeling an unrelated figure from an unrelated publication and reproducing it exactly in a new publication, claiming that it represents new data.
Self-plagiarism or multiple publication of the same content with different titles or in different journals is sometimes also considered misconduct; scientific journals explicitly ask authors not to do this. This practice, often called ‘salami publication,’ refers to dividing one study into multiple smaller publications and is generally discouraged by journals and research integrity guidelines. According to some editors, this includes publishing the same article in a different language if the same research as multiple publications is counted as separate research.
Other types of research misconduct by authors are also recognized:

Unmerited authorship is the practice of giving authorship credit to someone improperly. Ghostwriting describes when someone other than the named author(s) makes a major contribution to the research. Sometimes, this is done to mask contributions from authors with a conflict of interest. In other cases, a ghost authorship occurs where the ghost author sells the research paper to a colleague who wants the publication in order to boost their publishing metrics. Guest authorship is the phenomenon wherein authorship is given to someone who has not made any substantial contribution. This can be done by senior researchers who muscle their way onto the papers of inexperienced junior researchers as well as others that stack authorship in an effort to guarantee publication. This is much harder to prove due to a lack of consistency in defining "authorship" or "substantial contribution".
Certain forms of citation bias, such as deliberately omitting scientific dissent, are discussed in the research integrity literature as practices that may undermine the scientific record. Academic bias can reduce academic freedom and hinder finding scientific truth.
Misconduct during scholarly peer review process: