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According to a recent Washington Post article, “many scientists admit to misconduct.”

Few scientists fabricate results from scratch or flatly plagiarize the work of others, but a surprising number engage in troubling degrees of fact-bending or deceit, according to the first large-scale survey of scientific misbehavior.

The survey was sent out to “thousands” of NIH scientists and 3,247 anonymous replies generated somewhat unpleasant results.

I don’t think anyone can believe that science is inherently ethical. Scientists are people, and as a competitive field, some will try to bend the rules.

Among the findings:

• 0.3% admitted to faking data.
• 1.4% admitted to plagiarism.
• Some 4.7% admitted to publishing the same data twice to “beef up their résumés.”
• “More than 5 percent” admitted to tossing data because the information contradicted previous results.
• Ten percent admitted they incorrectly included their names or others on publications.

I’m honestly not sure if these are bad or good. I don’t have any idea how these might compare with other careers. I think that would be an interesting counterpoint. Unfortunately, since this was the largest survey of its kind, it’s also hard to determine if these attitudes have changed over time. For example, the study suggests that increasingly competitive scientific and engineering funding sources are correlated with pressure to make such ethical “sins.”

Interestingly, while the Washington Post article simply states “many,” coverage in the journal Nature balances two points:

• More than 1/3 of the survey responses admit at least a very minor “sin.” (e.g., adding authors to a paper)
• Dropping an outlying data point is not the same as plagiarizing a paper.