How Much Scientific Research Is Actually Fraudulent?

A false positive in scientific research occurs when there is statistically significant evidence for something that isn't real.

My subsequent article, "Most Scientific Findings Are False or Useless," which reported the conclusions of Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society researcher Daniel Sarewitz's distressing essay, "Saving Science," also did not consider the possibility of extensive scientific dishonesty as an explanation for the massive proliferation of false positives.

In his famous 2005 article, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," Stanford University biostatistician John Ioannidis cited conflicts of interest as one factor driving the generation of false positives but also did not suggest that actual research fraud was a big problem.

How bad is the false-positive problem in scientific research? As I earlier reported, a 2015 editorial in The Lancet observed that "Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue." A 2015 British Academy of Medical Sciences report suggested that the false discovery rate in some areas of biomedicine could be as high as 69 percent.

Summarizing their results, an article in Science notes, "More than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature. And one in 12 [8 percent] admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3 years: the fabrication or falsification of research results." Daniele Fanelli, a research ethicist at the London School of Economics, tells Science that 51 percent of researchers admitting to questionable research practices "Could still be an underestimate."

In June, a meta-analysis of prior studies on questionable research practices and misconduct published in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics reported that more than 15 percent of researchers had witnessed others who had committed at least one instance of research misconduct, while nearly 40 percent were aware of others who had engaged in at least one questionable research practice.

During a webinar on research fraud, Smith reported that she insisted "That it is not a problem of bad apples but bad barrels if not of rotten forests or orchards." Redman argues, according to Smith, "That research misconduct is a systems problem-the system provides incentives to publish fraudulent research and does not have adequate regulatory processes." The research publication system is built on trust and peer review is not designed to detect fraud.
 

https://reason.com/2021/07/09/how-much-scientific-research-is-actually-fraudulent/