DUSAN PETRICICIn 1992, oncologist Werner Bezwoda wowed an audience at a conference in San Diego by describing how 90 percent of women with advanced breast cancer whom he had treated in his South African clinic with high-dose chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation had achieved complete remission of their cancer. Seven years later he described more good results, but three independent trials of the treatment found no benefit. People became suspicious, and investigators eventually found that the hospital ethics committee had no record of his studies, patients reported as alive had been discharged for terminal care, and many of them had not given consent. Bezwoda eventually confessed to misconduct and disappeared from science. Shortly thereafter, his studies were retracted.
Research misconduct is most often discussed in the context of developed countries, but as this high-profile case illustrates, wherever there is human activity—whether it is politics, sports, religion, or science—there is wrongdoing. Furthermore, as the amount of research in low- and middle-income countries increases, so will research misconduct. But how much is there, what form does it take, and how are countries responding?
In a recent PLOS Medicine article (10:e1001315, 2013), we addressed the “big three” of research misconduct: data fabrication, data falsification, and plagiarism. Increasingly, however, we recognize that a multitude of “questionable research practices,” including selective reporting, redundant publication, hiding conflicts of interest, listing authors on papers who have done little or nothing, and much more, probably does more damage to science than ...
