Scientific misconduct - background information

Scientific misconduct in the scientific community

Scientific misconduct is the violation against scientific rules and standards. The scientific rules and standards are described for example in the Code of Conduct: Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Pratice (2019) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (German Research Foundation), in the Rules of Good Academic Practice (2013) of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst DAAD (German Academic Exchange Organisation), in the Empfehlung zum Umgang mit wissenschaftlichem Fehlverhalten in den Hochschulen (Advice for the handling of scientific misconduct in universities) (1998) of the Deutsche Hochschulrektorenkonferenz HRK (German Rectors’ Conference), amongst others.

The Helmholtz Gemeinschaft lists the following violations against scientific rules as scientific misconduct in their Beschluss der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft zur Sicherung der guten wissenschaftlichen Praxis (Resolution of the Helmholtz community for the protection of good scientific praxis) (1998):

• The fabrication or forgery of data
• False statements in applications, publications and the like
• The violation of intellectual property rights via
  • Plagiarism
  • False indication of authorship
  • Theft of ideas
• Destruction of experimental setups

Consequences of scientific misconduct

The punishment for scientist who commit such scientific misconduct varies from case to case: The latest famous case is the one of the former federal minister for family affairs who stepped back from her post after an investigation of her PhD in which several cases of plagiarism could be found. Other punishments, e.g. by the DAAD, include the withdrawal of fundings, the ban on applications and the like.