Specialists in science ethics, Barbara Redman and Jon Merz, recently examined the records of scientists who were officially found guilty of misconduct by the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) between January 1994 and December 2001. In a report, recently published in scientific journal Science, the specialists made an attempt to know what happens after a scientist has been found guilty of misconduct.
During the said period, the ORI had found 106 scientists guilty of misconduct (plagiarism, data manipulation, or fabrication of results). Not including students and research fellows, the above total contained 43 scientists with established careers. It was found that, of these, only 17 had one infraction, while the rest committed multiple acts of misconduct. To see how a guilty verdict affected those who were already a recognised part of the scientific community, Redman and Merz focused on those 43 scientists.
From available PubMed records, the experts found that 37 of the scientists published an average of 2.1 papers in a year before they were found guilty. After being 'caught', these scientists averaged 1.0 paper per year from late 2003, with 12 publishing nothing at all. Therefore, there was a considerable decline in productivity, but a large portion of the scientists were still able to get their work accepted for publication.
In terms of official penalties, it was found that over half of them received three-year debarments from obtaining grants and contracts. All 43 of them were banned from Public Health Service advisory boards for an average of 3.5 years. Despite this, 16 out of the 37 traceable scientists were still employed in academia. While the two science ethics specialists failed to break down the punishments by the type of misconduct committed, they did note that falsification and fabrication were treated more severely than plagiarism.
