Experiencing scientific dishonesty

Scientific dishonesty is becoming the focus of increasing attention from both regulators and educators. An important part of this debate is how to ensure that new recruits to science are educated and socialised in a manner that promotes scientific integrity. Many previously believed that scientific integrity would be absorbed and inculcated automatically, as by osmosis from older peers, but recent research fraud scandals has shown that this process hasn't worked. One reason for this might be that the older peers themselves lack integrity. We have previously in the JME published case reports about the pressures older academics sometimes put on younger academics and we are happy in this issue to publish a Swedish questionnaire study on the knowledge and experiences of PhD students in the health sciences in relation to scientific misconduct (See page 315). Many results in this study are interesting but let me highlight two. Out of the 134 respondents 11 had during the last 12 months been exposed to unethical pressure in relation to authorship issues, and seven in relation to falsification of data. If this is representative of the environment in which people are inducted into research, it is not strange that some end up …