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Over the past couple of decades, the apparent widespread occurrence of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) in scientific research has been widely discussed in the research ethics literature as a source of concern. Various ways of reducing their use have been proposed and implemented, ranging from improved training and incentives for adopting best practices to systematic reforms. This article reports on the results of two studies that investigated the efficacy of simple, psychological interventions aimed at changing researcher attitudes toward QRPs. While the interventions did not significantly modify researchers' reactions to QRPs, they showed differential efficacy depending on scientists' experience, suggesting complexities in researcher psychology and the ethics of QRPs that merit further study.

We designed and tested the efficacy of a 1-hr training session to mitigate endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs), research practices that raise ethical concerns and are detrimental to reproducible science, in psychology graduate students. We assessed attitudes toward QRPs 1 week prior to the training, 1 week following the training, and at 2-month follow-up. Participants reported QRPs as less ethically defensible 1 week following the intervention compared with 1 week prior, with attitudes at 2-month follow-up falling in between these time points. Results were maintained even when controlling for socially desirable responding. Participants who rated the training more favorably demonstrated greater attitude change toward detrimental research practices. These results provide evidence that an intervention to educate graduate students about QRPs and their negative impact on science can mitigate consideration of such practices as ethically defensible, although such benefits may not hold over time without additional training sessions.

AbstractResearch integrity is guided by a set of principles to ensure research reliability, and rigor. It serves as a pillar to uphold society’s trust in science and foster scientific progress. However, over the past two decades, a surge in research integrity concerns, including fraudulent research, reproducibility challenges, and questionable practices, has raised critical questions about the reliability of scientific outputs, particularly in biomedical research. In the biomedical sciences, any breaches in research integrity could potentially lead to a domino effect impacting patient care, medical interventions, and the broader implementation of healthcare policies. Addressing these breaches requires measures such as rigorous research methods, transparent reporting, and changing the research culture. Institutional support through clear guidelines, robust training, and mentorship is crucial to fostering a culture of research integrity. However, structural and institutional factors, including research incentives and recognition systems, play an important role in research behavior. Therefore, promoting research integrity demands a collective effort from all stakeholders to maintain public trust in the scientific community and ensure the reliability of science. Here we discuss some definitions and principles, the implications for biomedical sciences, and propose actionable steps to foster research integrity.

Concerns about the conduct of research are pervasive in many fields, including education. In this preregistered study, we replicated and extended previous studies from other fields by asking education researchers about 10 questionable research practices and five open research practices. We asked them to estimate the prevalence of the practices in the field, to self-report their own use of such practices, and to estimate the appropriateness of these behaviors in education research. We made predictions under four umbrella categories: comparison to psychology, geographic location, career stage, and quantitative orientation. Broadly, our results suggest that both questionable and open research practices are used by many education researchers. This baseline information will be useful as education researchers seek to understand existing social norms and grapple with whether and how to improve research practices.

When the probability of being cited depends on the outcome of that study, this is called citation bias. The aim of this study is to assess the determinants of citation and how these compare across six different biomedical research fields. Citation network analyses were performed for six biomedical research questions. After identifying all relevant publications, all potential citations were mapped together with the actually performed citations in each network. As determinants of citation we assessed the following: study outcome, study design, sample size, journal impact factor, gender, affiliation, authority and continent of the corresponding author, funding source, title of the publication, number of references, and self-citation. Random effect logistic regression analysis was used to assess these factors. Four out of six networks showed evidence for citation bias. Self-citation, authority of the author, and journal impact factor were also positively associated with the probability of citation in all networks. The probability of being cited seems associated with positive study outcomes, the authority of its authors, and the journal in which that article is published. In addition, each network showed specific characteristics that impact the citation dynamics and that need to be considered when performing and interpreting citation analyses.

Citation bias concerns the selective citation of scientific articles based on their results. We brought together all available evidence on citation bias across scientific disciplines and quantified its impact. An extensive search strategy was applied to the Web of Science Core Collection and Medline, yielding 52 studies in total. We classified these studies on scientific discipline, selection method, and other variables. We also performed random-effects meta-analyses to pool the effect of positive vs. negative results on subsequent citations. Finally, we checked for other determinants of citation as reported in the citation bias literature. Evidence for the occurrence of citation bias was most prominent in the biomedical sciences and least in the natural sciences. Articles with statistically significant results were cited 1.6 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.3-1.8) times more often than articles with nonsignificant results. Articles in which the authors explicitly conclude to have found support for their hypothesis were cited 2.7 (CI 2.0-3.7) times as often. Article results and journal impact factor were associated with citation more often than any other reported determinant. Similar to what we already know on publication bias, also citation bias can lead to an overrepresentation of positive results and unfounded beliefs.

Research in the last decade has expressed considerable optimism about the clinical potential of psychedelics for the treatment of mental disorders. This optimism is reflected in an increase in research papers, investments by pharmaceutical companies, patents, media coverage, as well as political and legislative changes. However, psychedelic science is facing serious challenges that threaten the validity of core findings and raise doubt regarding clinical efficacy and safety. In this paper, we introduce the 10 most pressing challenges, grouped into easy, moderate, and hard problems. We show how these problems threaten internal validity (treatment effects are due to factors unrelated to the treatment), external validity (lack of generalizability), construct validity (unclear working mechanism), or statistical conclusion validity (conclusions do not follow from the data and methods). These problems tend to co-occur in psychedelic studies, limiting conclusions that can be drawn about the safety and efficacy of psychedelic therapy. We provide a roadmap for tackling these challenges and share a checklist that researchers, journalists, funders, policymakers, and other stakeholders can use to assess the quality of psychedelic science. Addressing today’s problems is necessary to find out whether the optimism regarding the therapeutic potential of psychedelics has been warranted and to avoid history repeating itself.

Irresponsible research practices damaging the value of science has been an increasing concern among researchers, but previous work failed to estimate the prevalence of all forms of irresponsible research behavior. Additionally, these analyses have not included articles published in the last decade from 2011 to 2020. This meta-analysis provides an updated meta-analysis that calculates the pooled estimates of research misconduct (RM) and questionable research practices (QRPs), and explores the factors associated with the prevalence of these issues. The estimates, committing RM concern at least 1 of FFP (falsification, fabrication, plagiarism) and (unspecified) QRPs concern 1 or more QRPs, were 2.9% (95% CI 2.1–3.8%) and 12.5% (95% CI 10.5–14.7%), respectively. In addition, 15.5% (95% CI 12.4–19.2%) of researchers witnessed others who had committed at least 1 RM, while 39.7% (95% CI 35.6–44.0%) were aware of others who had used at least 1 QRP. The results document that response proportion, limited recall period, career level, disciplinary background and locations all affect significantly the prevalence of these issues. This meta-analysis addresses a gap in existing meta-analyses and estimates the prevalence of all forms of RM and QRPs, thus providing a better understanding of irresponsible research behaviors.

Scientific progress depends on the integrity of data and research findings. Intentionally distorting research data and findings constitutes scientific misconduct and introduces falsehoods into the scientific record. Unintentional distortions arising from questionable research practices (QRPs), such as unsystematically deleting outliers, pose similar obstacles to knowledge advancement. To investigate the extent of misconduct and QRPs in quantitative applied linguistics research, we surveyed 351 applied linguists who conduct quantitative research about their practices related to data handling and reporting. We found that 17% of respondents (approximately 1 in 6) admitted to 1 or more forms of scientific misconduct and that 94% admitted to 1 or more QRPs relevant to quantitative research. We also examined these practices in relation to participant background and training. Researchers admitting to misconduct tended to be earlier in their careers and had experienced publication rejection due to lack of statistically significant results. Quantitative training had generally desirable associations with QRPs. Publication rate and experience with publication rejection were associated with admission of several QRPs related to omitting statistical results. We discuss these findings and offer 5 recommendations for the field of applied linguistics to improve ethical quantitative data handling and reporting in research.

Poor research integrity is increasingly recognised as a serious problem in science. We outline some evidence for this claim and introduce the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) journals' Research Integrity Group, which has been created to address this problem.