Page 31 - Academic and Research Book_WEB

fraud, it becomes nearly impossible to evaluate the paper.” The article further states that, “the main
tasks of a referee are to ensure that a paper reports physically reasonable phenomena and includes
enough detail for people to question the results.” The reference to “physically reasonable phenomena”
brings in a major cause for fraud. It can also be, as noted in the same article by Levi, that the person
disseminating falsehood was like a crystal-gazer who believed that someone else would confirm these
results and the crystal-gazer would get credit! Quoting from Martin Blume, the then editor-in-chief
for the American Physical Society (APS), Levi (ibid.) writes, “He wonders why anyone would risk
getting caught by publishing fabricated data that alleges spectacular results unless, perhaps, the person
was what he termed a “true believer” who had hopes of getting credit when someone else confirmed
the results.” Fraud in an effort to be the first, without actually being the first, is the major cause for
fabrication of results.

We now come back to “enough detail for people to question the results.” The results will be questioned,
soon after publication, by independent groups who might have been competing to answer the same
question. The results will also be scrutinized, in some distant future, by researchers who believe them
and want to take the work forward. Both these groups of researchers are investing a lot of effort and
will feel cheated if the errant authors had published fabricated results. These researchers who follow
up on the published work are not anonymous, and will go to great lengths to get the errant authors
penalised (to receive some moral compensation for their wasted time and effort) if the results cannot
be reproduced.

It can also be that the authors indulging in fabrication or falsification consider that the paper they are
publishing is not important enough to be tested at all! Unlike the “true believers” that Martin Blume
talked about, these authors are publishing only to add numbers to their list of publications and be
rewarded based on the present scientometrics-based evaluation systems. This hope that their results
will never be cross-checked, and never pursued enough to be questioned publicly, then opens a small
window for unethical researchers to disseminate fraudulent results in standard respected journals.

Examples of Fabrication and Falsification from Literature

I am giving here in some detail one example that comes from my discipline, and that I am familiar
with. The errant authors were penalized in an exemplary fashion. This should serve as a strong
deterrent to our young researchers, especially as this indicates that the research community takes
such unethical behaviour very seriously. As mentioned earlier, there is a growing effort to impose
penalties on the perpetrators of FFP, and penalties are even being imposed ex-post-facto (that is,
on misdemeanours committed before the penalties were listed in the rule-book). This calls for
increased awareness of what is unethical since the penalties may become even more severe as time
progresses.

Indian researchers have been accused many times of image manipulation. Most of these accusations
have resulted in papers being retracted, but with no known case of a penalty that is more severe
than that. These instances are not appropriate deterrents. There was one case alleging that a
researcher from India fabricated geological data, and the genuineness of the fossil samples was
questioned in prestigious established journals (Talent, 1989). A four-year enquiry was conducted
and the errant author was, in a limited penalty, suspended from the post of director of the
Institute of Palaeontology at the Panjab University in Chandigarh. The errant author was, however,
subsequently reinstated following a court order and retired ‘normally’ with superannuation benefits,
in 2002. This case does serve as a kind of deterrent in that the perpetrator was penalized with only a
brief suspension.

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