Science, communication andintegrity in the third millenium
Eva Baranyiová
Czech University of Life Sciences Prague,
Czech Republic
APAME 2013, Tokyo, August 2-4, 2012Outline
Medical sciences: goals,achievements and failures Communication: science lead astray(academic misconduct) Integrity in communication: what
can we do?

Medical sciences: goals,achievements and failures

Inequities are killing
people on grand scale,reports WHO'sCommission on Social
Determinants of Health(2008)“No one should be denied access to life-saving or healthpromoting interventions for unfair reasons, including thosewith economic or social causes” Margaret Chan, WHO DirectorGeneral (Chan, 2008)

CSDH (2008)
“Our children have dramatically different life
chances depending on where they were born.
In Japan or Sweden they can expect to live morethan 80 years; in Brazil, 72 years; India, 63years; and in one of several African countries,fewer than 50 years. And within countries, thedifferences in life chances are dramatic and areseen worldwide. The poorest of the poor havehigh levels of illness and premature mortality.
But poor health is not confined to those worst off.
In countries at all levels of income, health andillness follow a social gradient: the lower thesocioeconomic position, the worse the health.
It does not have to be this way and it is not rightthat it should be like thisˮ.

Gary Null et al.: Death by medicine
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2.2 mil/yr U.S. hospital patients: adverse drug
reactions (ADRs)
45 mil/yr antibiotics prescribed for viral
infections where they have no effect
7.5 mil/yr unnecessary medical/surgicalprocedures
8.9 mill/yr unnecessary hospitalizations
7.8 million pacients dead in 10 years
due to iatrogenic damage
 784 000/yr deaths due to modern medicine
interventions ("we are only capturing 5-20%of the actual deaths": C. Dean in this book)(Strunecká and Patočka, 2012)

Inflation of mental disease diagnoses
as reflected in Diagnostic and Statistic
Manual of Mental Diseases
DSM 1962: 130 pages
DSM 1968: 134 pages
DSM 1980: 494 pages
DSM 1994: 886 pages
DSM 2013: 1000 pages

New criteria switch daily problems
to mental disturbances.
Millions of people may become“psychiatric casesˮ overnight.
Data cited from graph on p. 113,
in the articly by
Jörg Blech: Wahnsinn wird
normal: Der Spiegel, 4, 2013:111-119

Incapacity to work due to mental diseases
per insured person:
number of days missing at work(or reported to unemployment agency)

Unemployed in 2000: approx. 3.5 d in 2011: approx. 9 d
Employedin 2000: approx 1.5 d, in 2011: approx. 1.9 d

Data cited from graph on p. 114, in the article by
Jörg Blech: Wahnsinn wird normal: Der Spiegel, 4, 2013: 111-119

A booming drug market (Germany)Average daily dosesof antidepressants per
insured person/year:
increased by 296% since 2000:

Unemployed: 8.0 g/d in 2000
31.7 g/d in 2011

Employed: 3.7 g/d in 2000
10.0 g/d in 2011

Data cited from graph on p. 117
in the article byJörg Blech: Wahnsinn wird normal:
Der Spiegel, 4, 2013: 111-119

Communication: science lead
astray (academic misconduct)

The Changing Face of Science
Growing numbers of scientists
in various fields
 International collaboration,interdisciplinary approaches Growing competition
 Resources Conflicts of interest
 Profit to shareholdersCurrent Pressures Facing Academic
Science (Goldberg, 2011)"Non-institutional sources of income• Consultants to government and industry• Expert legal witnesses• Patent development• Formation of private companies
 Commercial funding of research• Major source for many scientists• Loss of control over conduct of research• Publication restrictions
 Fame and prestige• Media interviews and press interviews• University office of public relations
Current Pressures Facing Academic
Science (Goldberg, 2011), continued


Reduced incentives for non-researchrelated activities• Teaching, administration, professional
excellence• Appointment, tenure, promotion

Increased role of government• Political interference: totalitarian state• Full time scientists in gov. depts• Government as contractor• Space and defence programs"

Problems in Science
Honest errors (scientific mistakes)
 Errors through negligence Misconduct in science• involves deception:plagiarism (+ self-plagiarism) fraud: fabrication of data fraud: falsification of data theft of intellectual property and data,
illegal use of someone else’s illustrations


E. Baranyiová: Plagiarism, Geneva,
June 2010

Plagiarism
is the practice of using or copying
someone else’s idea or work andpretending that you thought of itor created it• (Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, 1995,p. 1254)

Plagiarism is an idea or a piece of writingor music that has been secretly copiedfrom someone else’s work
• (Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, 1995,p. 1254)

20
10

2000

1990

1980

1970

1960

1950

19
45

1935

19
25

19
15

1900
4

4

4

4

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

3-191
-192
-193
-194
-194
-195
-196
-1
97
-1
98
-199
-200-201

Web of Science: key word “plagiarismˮ(EB 30.4.2010 and 23.7.2013)
1000

900

800

700

600

500

400

300

200

1000

Plagiarism (Kerans and de Jager,2010)
Copy-paste writing or cut-pastewriting
 Micro-plagiarism
 Patch writing or mosaic writing
 Plagiarism
 Self-plagiarism Duplicate or redundant publication
 Translated plagiarism

Self-plagiarism
The same hypotheses, identical data,
discussion and conclusions, references
 No reference to the original article
(Roig, 2006)

30% of the identical original text
is acceptable (Samuelson, 1994)
 "Fair" use Australian Copyright Act – 10%
identical text may be toleratedFraudData fabrication, i.e. generationof artifical, made-up data, not obtainedin a study Theft of data (from a publishedor unpublished work, with no credit
to author); theft of intellectual property(from a grant application, post-graduate
program or a peer review) Data falsification: changing of data to "fit"the hypothesisThe researcher type who commits
fraud (Mutch, 2011)

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"first or senior author who is a repeat
offendermore frequently publishes with at least
one co-author who also has fraudulent
publications
has a greater number of co-authors –suggested as a means to diffuse
responsibility
targets journals with a high IF
has delayed retraction compared withpapers rejected solely on account of errors
is associated with papers originatingfrom the United States."

Retraction (COPE)"The main purpose of retractions
is to correct the literature and ensure
its integrity rather than to punish
authors who misbehave" Retraction notices: …"be freely
available to readers"• (E. Wager, P. Williams, 2011)a study for COPE Guidelines

Retraction statement (from WOS):
"Abstract: The following article isretracted because it was brought
to our attention that it was heavily
plagiarized from an earlier article
published in the Asian Journal ofSurgery (Chow et al. Asian J Surg.
2005 Jul; 28(3): 179-84. PMID:16024311). Attempts to contact thecorresponding author for an
explanation were unsuccessful."Journal

No. of retracted
articles2011 IFThe Journalof BiologicalChemistry

37

5.12

Anesthesia &Analgesia

33

3.07

Science32

32.45The Journal
30of Immunology

5.86

Proc. Natl.
Acad. Sci.

27

10.47

Blood

219.79Nature1736.24

The Journalof Clinical
Investigation

1715.43

CancerResearch

168.16

Cell

1334.77(Corbyn,2012)

Retracted papers (Steen, 2010)
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A study of 742 retracted English language research papers
between 2000 and 2010 (PubMed)
The number of papers retracted for fraud increased morethan sevenfold between 2004 and 2009
Error (or undisclosed reason): 73.5%, fraud: 26.6%;
Most common reason: scientific mistake (31.5%)
Multiple reasons: 9.0%
Data fabrication (incl. data plagiarism) more frequent thantext plagiarism
The rate of increase in retractions greater than increasein publications
31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted
in any way; a naive reader would not be alerted
to a retracted paper

Integrity in communication: what
can we do?

Growing Awareness of the Problem
Conference on plagiarism, Universityof Ottawa, September 26-28, 1991
 Colloquium on Documentary Culture,
Florence and Rome 1992
 Northumbria University, Newcastle
upon Tyne, England:• 2004 - first International Conferenceon Plagiarism• 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012

Solutions or “What road should
we take?ˮ (Goldberg, 2011)
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“Remain the Servant of One Master
Decline External Work and CommercialContracts
Provide Adequate Research Resources
to Academic Staff
Limit Staff Size of Individual
Investigators
Simplify Grant Application Processes
Create National or Regional Officeof Research OmbudsmanˮSolutions suggested (Mutch, 2011)"Authorship should only be earned
and not awarded
 Good mentoring and diligent support staff
 Blinded assessment of data
 Data reviewed by all investigators
 Consensus on data interpretation A vigorous/independent Research Office National Research Integrity Agency"What we should do
Alert and educate our authors, editors,
reviewers, and editorial board members
 Include definitions of all misconduct forms
in Instructions for authors
 Include policies of dealing with misconduct
in Instructions for authors Use tools available to detect plagiarism
where appropriate
 Collaborate with organisations such as
COPE, ORI, CSE, WAME, EASEWhat we should doEducate at all levels:• Undergraduate courses on science
writing: include interactive seminars
on ethical conduct, consequencesof fraud• example of post-graduate courses:
Czech Academy of Sciences, one-weekcourses, lectures on misconduct
included (5 courses/yr, about 70
participants in each)Thank you
Contact:
Eva Baranyiová
EASE Vice-President (www.ease.org.uk)
Faculty of Tropics and Subtropics
Czech University of Life Sciences PragueKamýcká 129
165 21 Prague 6
Czech Republic
E-Mail: ebaranyi@seznam.cz

My sincere thanks are due to my mentor, Professor Antonín Holubfor his stimulating support, discussions and critique in preparation of this talk.

References
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Baranyiová E (2010): Plagiarism, self-plagiarism and other unethical conduct. IAVE
7th Annual Meeting, Geneva, June 1, 2010
Corbyn Z (2012): Misconduct is the main cause of life-sciences retractions. Nature,490: 21
CSDH (2008): Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on thesocial determinants of health. Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinantsof Health. Geneva, World Health Organization
Goldberg DM (2011): Science at the crossroads: factor fiction? J Med Biochem 30(2):79-92
Kerans ME, de Jager M (2010): Handling plagiarismat the manuscript editor´s desk. European Science Editing 36(3):62-66
Mutch WAC (2011): Academic fraud: perspectives froma lifelong anesthesia. Can J Anesth 58:782-788
Null G, Dean C, Feldman M, Rasio D, Smith D: Death by Medicine.
www.webdc.com/pdfs/death-by-medicine/pdf, accessed June 28, 2013
Roig M (2006): Plagiarism in the sciences: What do we really know? MET Conference,
Barcelona, October 29, 2006
Samuelson P (1994): Self-plagiarism or fair use? Communications of the ACM 37(8):21-25Steen GR (2010):Retractions in the scientific literature. Is the incidenceof research fraud increasing? J Med Ethics, doi:10.1136/jme.2010.040923
Strunecká A, Patočka J (2012): Doba jedová 2. (In Czech, A Toxic Time 2). Triton,Praha/Kroměříž, ISBN 978-80-7387-555-8
Wager E, Williams P (2011):Why and how do journals retract articles?
An analysis of Medline retractions 1988-2008. J Med Ethics 37:567-570