These entities are actually concerned not only with "fraud," but also with misconduct and conflict of interest--all three of which are types of misbehavior that may not always be so easily distinguishable. One of the reasons that nobody knows the exact extent of scientific fraud is that nobody knows exactly what it is. What do we mean by the phrase?
The Office of Scientific Integrity defines scientific "mis- conduct" as "fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted with-in the scientific com- munity for proposing, conducting, and reporting research."
By contrast, California Institute of Technology regulations (as a random example) define science fraud as "serious misconduct with intent to deceive, for example, faking data, plagiarism, or misappropriation of ideas." There are two distinctions to note here. First, PHS steers clear of saying "fraud," presumably because it doesn't want cases hung up on proving ...
