Beware the scientists who lie, cheat and defraud
For the most part, scientists are trustworthy. But, as with any profession, there are lying, cheating and fraudulent researchers.
One of the most famous scientific cheats unearthed fossils at Piltdown, near London, in 1912, and claimed that humanity evolved from apes – in Britain. The discovery gave human evolutionary studies a bum steer for 40 years until the doctored bones were proved to be a hoax.
In 1998, Dr Andrew Wakefield claimed that his research showed that mumps and measles vaccinations caused autism. The claim spread like wildfire, driving down vaccination rates in Europe, America and New Zealand. Investigations revealed that Wakefield’s claims were ‘‘utterly false’’ and he had a personal financial interest in the sale of a competing vaccine.
Today’s scientific world is abuzz with news of fresh cheats and frauds. When these publications are exposed, scientific journals usually ‘‘retract’’ the offending articles.
Most recent retracted articles originally appeared in American journals, then Chinese, then Iranian, Italian and, surprisingly, Finnish science journals.
Recent high-profile cases include a top Swedish surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini, who published six papers claiming that his team had successfully transplanted stem cells in three patients’ windpipes. He forgot to mention that all his patients died of complications.
In Naples, nutritionist Federico Infascelli showed that modified genes could end up in baby goats whose mothers ate genetically modified food. This news spread like wildfire until it was shown that all of the data was fabricated.
In 2017, two Canadian scientists claimed their experiments supported Wakefield’s vaccineautism connection. Other scientists demolished the study’s design, methods and analysis, and found false data and misleading illustrations. The two claimed innocence and asked for a retraction.
If you falsify scientific data or plagiarise material in Europe, America or Australasia, your career in academia is pretty much over. But many countries take a more relaxed attitude to scientific misconduct.
China and Iran are hotbeds of scientific misconduct. Last year, more than 150 papers were retracted from Chinese journals. Publishers of Iranian scientific journals have recently retracted 65 articles full of fake data, pretended authors, plagiarism and a compromised refereeing system. Government ministers, university deans and an ex-president were among the misbehaving Iranian scientists.
I can find no examples of fake data or plagiarism among Australian or New Zealand scientists. Nevertheless some get into trouble.
Australian senior scientist Suzanne Miller has been charged with dishonestly gaining private health insurance worth $45,000 as an employee of the Queensland Museum and other offences. Her case is continuing.
Last October, an Auckland court found New Zealand dairy scientist Trevor Lock guilty on 18 charges of misappropriating money from a milk and honey export business and for providing false information to the fraud office.
But help is on the way. A German scientist was recently informed that he had published inaccurate statistics. When the scientist inquired about his critic he discovered it was a robot. A Dutch nerd has invented a robot programmed to check the accuracy of statistics in thousands of scientific publications.