FEATURE ARTICLE
Ethical Problems in Academic Research
A survey of doctoral candidates and faculty raises important questions about the ethical environment of graduate education and research
Judith Swazey, Melissa Anderson, Karen Louis
Questionable Research Practices
Across the disciplines, reports of questionable research practices
are far more common than reports of outright misconduct. For
example, 43 percent of faculty say they know of peers making
inappropriate use of university resources for personal purposes, and
almost one-third know of inappropriate assignment of authorship of
research papers (Figure 5). Twenty-two percent of faculty
report instances of their colleagues overlooking sloppy use of data,
and 15 percent know of cases where data that would contradict an
investigator's own previous research have not been presented.
Although students reportedly engage in questionable research
practices at somewhat lower rates than faculty, the data indicate
that substantial numbers of both students and faculty have observed
such practices by students.
The most significant
disciplinary differences in questionable research practices are in
the use of university resources for outside consulting or other
personal purposes (Figure 6) and in the inappropriate
assignment of authorship (Figure 7). Among faculty, 61
percent of civil engineers have direct knowledge of their
colleagues' inappropriate use of resources, and 44 percent report
inappropriate assignment of authorship. According to student
respondents, however, inappropriate assignment of authorship by
faculty is most common in microbiology (38 percent).
Disciplinary differences in overlooking others' use of flawed data
or questionable interpretations of data are largely insignificant,
except in the case of student reports of faculty behavior. Here,
civil engineering students report significantly lower levels of
these practices compared to other fields (Figure 8). With
respect to failing to present data that contradict one's previous
research, there are disciplinary differences among student, but not
faculty, responses (Figure 9). More students in
microbiology (21 percent) than in other fields report direct
knowledge of this practice by faculty, whereas students in chemistry
and microbiology report the highest levels of this practice by their
peers (16 and 17 percent).
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