In July, news that shook the field of Alzheimer’s disease research emerged: Matthew Schrag, a neurologist at Vanderbilt University, tipped off the scientific community that a groundbreaking 2006 study may have falsified data and images, calling its findings—and much of the research based on those findings—into question.
Scientific misconduct, however, is more common than one would hope, and the Alzheimer’s research incident was just the latest example to call attention to the troubling practice. In 2015, the journal Science retracted a paper after a graduate student uncovered improper survey methods. That same year, news came out that a scholar fabricated data related to cancer research to aggrandize genomic technology he had developed.
According to a 2022 study conducted by the Dutch National Survey on Research Integrity, more than half of the researchers surveyed engaged in “questionable research practices,” such as selectively choosing references to reinforce their results. In the life ...
