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| Piltdown man |
Fraudulent
activity is not exclusive of politicians and the world of finances, though
perhaps it is more widespread in those fields. It also affects scientists, who,
like every human being, are prone to temptation and sometimes (surprisingly
rarely) fall into it. The reasons are the usual: ambition, fame and the unbearable
pressure to publish results.
The first
thing we must do is find out what is fraud and what it is not. According to the
criteria used in the United States, there are just two essentially fraudulent
scientific activities: plagiarism and the invention or falsification of
experimental results. The following activities are questionable, but not fraud:
mistaking speculation with fact; incorrect use of statistical procedures; seeking
approval after the fact for ethically controversial experiments. Finally, the
following activities must not be considered fraudulent or questionable:
judgment errors, differences of opinion in the interpretation of data, or involuntary
errors in their analysis.
