Scientific misconduct is the violation of ethical and professional standards in research, including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and other practices that compromise the integrity of the design, conduct, analysis, reporting, or publication of scientific or research findings.
Basic definitions and urgency of dealing with misconduct
Various research ethics bodies provide definitions of scientific misconduct. For example, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) defines research misconduct to include (any of) fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.
A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions, reproduced in The COPE report 1999: Danish definition: "Intention or gross negligence leading to fabrication of the scientific message or a false credit or emphasis given to a scientist" Swedish definition: "Intention[al] distortion of the research process by fabrication of data, text, hypothesis, or methods from another researcher's manuscript form or publication; or distortion of the research process in other ways."
Scientific misconduct can harm the credibility of the research record, damage careers, and undermine public trust in science. It may also affect other researchers who rely on falsified or fabricated findings. Additionally, it can harm individuals who expose it. In addition there are public health implications attached to the promotion of medical or other interventions based on false or fabricated research findings. Scientific misconduct can result in loss of public trust in the integrity of science.
Three percent of the 3,475 research institutions that report to the US Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity (ORI) indicate some form of scientific misconduct. However the ORI will only investigate allegations of impropriety where research was funded by federal grants. They routinely monitor such research publications for red flags and their investigation is subject to a statute of limitations. Other private organizations like the Committee of Medical Journal Editors (COJE) can only police their own members.
A 2025 study from Northwestern University found that "the publication of fraudulent science is outpacing the growth rate of legitimate scientific publications". The study also discovered broad networks of organized scientific fraudsters.
Forms The U.S. National Science Foundation defines three types of research misconduct: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Fabrication is making up results and recording or reporting them. This is sometimes referred to as "drylabbing". A more minor form of fabrication is where references are included to give arguments the appearance of widespread acceptance, but are actually fake, or do not support the argument.Emmeche, slide 5 A 2026 Lancet study examined 2.47 million biomedical papers and identified 4,046 references classified as fabricated. The study reported an increase in such references between 2023 and early 2026 and discussed measures for improving reference verification. Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record. Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. One form is the appropriation of the ideas and results of others, and publishing as to make it appear the author had performed all the work under which the data was obtained. There are recognized subsets of plagiarism: Citation plagiarism involves failure to credit relevant prior work and can, in some cases, be considered research misconduct when done intentionally to misrepresent priority or originality. This is also known as, "citation amnesia", the "disregard syndrome" and "bibliographic negligence". Arguably, this is the most common type of scientific misconduct. Sometimes it is difficult to guess whether authors intentionally ignored a highly relevant cite or lacked knowledge of the prior work. Discovery credit can also be inadvertently reassigned from the original discoverer to a better-known researcher. This is a special case of the Matthew effect.Emmeche, slide 3, who refers to the phenomenon as Dulbecco's law. Plagiarism-fabrication is the act of mislabeling an unrelated figure from an unrelated publication and reproducing it exactly in a new publication, claiming that it represents new data. Self-plagiarism or multiple publication of the same content with different titles or in different journals is sometimes also considered misconduct; scientific journals explicitly ask authors not to do this. This practice, often called ‘salami publication,’ refers to dividing one study into multiple smaller publications and is generally discouraged by journals and research integrity guidelines. According to some editors, this includes publishing the same article in a different language if the same research as multiple publications is counted as separate research.
Other types of research misconduct by authors are also recognized: Unmerited authorship is the practice of giving authorship credit to someone improperly. Ghostwriting describes when someone other than the named author(s) makes a major contribution to the research. Sometimes, this is done to mask contributions from authors with a conflict of interest. In other cases, a ghost authorship occurs where the ghost author sells the research paper to a colleague who wants the publication in order to boost their publishing metrics. Guest authorship is the phenomenon wherein authorship is given to someone who has not made any substantial contribution. This can be done by senior researchers who muscle their way onto the papers of inexperienced junior researchers as well as others that stack authorship in an effort to guarantee publication. This is much harder to prove due to a lack of consistency in defining "authorship" or "substantial contribution". Certain forms of citation bias, such as deliberately omitting scientific dissent, are discussed in the research integrity literature as practices that may undermine the scientific record. Academic bias can reduce academic freedom and hinder finding scientific truth.
Misconduct during scholarly peer review process: A reviewer or editor with a conflict of interest can coerce the author to cite the reviewer's publications prior to recommending publication. This can inflate the perceived citation impact of a researcher's work and their reputation in the scientific community, similar to excessive self-citation. Suggesting fake peer reviewers can happen when journals invite authors to recommend a list of suitable peer reviewers, along with their contact information. In some cases, authors have recommended a "reviewer" for whom they provide a fake email address that in fact belongs to the author. If the editor follows the author's reviewer recommendation, the author can then write their own review.Biagioli, Mario. 2016. "Watch out for Cheats in Citation Game." Nature 535 (7611): 201–201. A rarer case of scientific misconduct is editorial misconduct, where an editor does not declare conflicts of interest, creates pseudonyms to review papers, gives strongly worded editorial decisions to support reviews suggesting to add excessive citations to their own unrelated works or to add themselves as a co-author or their name to the title of the manuscript.
Photo manipulation
Manipulation of images constitutes a form of research misconduct that some journals actively screen for because it can be detected through image analysis tools. In 2006, the Journal of Cell Biology gained publicity for instituting tests to detect photo manipulation in papers that were being considered for publication. This was in response to the increased usage of programs such as Adobe Photoshop by scientists, which facilitate photo manipulation. Since then more publishers, including the Nature Publishing Group, have instituted similar tests and require authors to minimize and specify the extent of photo manipulation when a manuscript is submitted for publication. However, there is little evidence to indicate that such tests are applied rigorously. One Nature paper published in 2009 has subsequently been reported to contain around 20 separate instances of image fraud.
Although the type of manipulation that is allowed can depend greatly on the type of experiment that is presented and also differ from one journal to another, in general the following manipulations are not allowed: splicing together different images to represent a single experiment changing brightness and contrast of only a part of the image any change that conceals information, even when it is considered to be non-specific, which includes: changing brightness and contrast to leave only the most intense signal using clone tools to hide information showing only a very small part of the photograph so that additional information is not visible
Image manipulations are typically done on visually repetitive images such as those of blots and microscope images.
Motivations According to David Goodstein of Caltech, there are multiple motivators for scientists to commit misconduct, which are briefly summarised here. Research on the motivations for scientific misconduct often cites publication pressure and career incentives as contributing factors.
Career pressure – Science is a very strongly career-driven discipline. Scientists depend on their record of achievement to receive ongoing support and funding, and a good reputation relies largely on the publication of high-profile scientific papers. Hence, there is a strong imperative to "publish or perish". This pressure is stronger in some research settings than others, contributing to the increased prevalence of misconduct in some parts of the world than others. This may motivate desperate (or fame-hungry) scientists to fabricate results. Ease of fabrication – In many scientific fields, results are often difficult to reproduce accurately, being obscured by noise, artifacts, and other extraneous data. That means that even if a scientist does falsify data, they may expect to get away with it – or at least claim innocence if their results conflict with others in the same field. There are few strongly backed systems to investigate possible violations, attempt to press charges, or punish deliberate misconduct. It is relatively easy to cheat although difficult to know exactly how many scientists fabricate data. Monetary gain – In many scientific fields, the most lucrative options for professionals are often selling opinions. Corporations can pay experts to support products directly or indirectly via conferences. Psychologists can make money by repeatedly acting as an expert witness in custody proceedings for the same law firms. Political bias among scientists can motivate reduced scientific integrity and academic bias.
Typology , a University of Geneva management professor and founder of the
(IRAFPA), has proposed a classification of academics who commit scientific misconduct. Drawing and institutional investigations and mediation conducted through IRAFPA, she distinguishes four profiles of what she calls "knowledge offenders" (), each associated with distinct motivations and calling for distinct remedial measures.
The academic tinkerer or academic — a term borrowed from Claude Lévi-Strauss (see also works by Michel de Certeau) — is familiar with academic values, but drifts into transgression through excessive commitments or career pressure (identified above among the motivations for misconduct). This profile acknowledges responsibility and is receptive to reparation.