yes, i think i said that when i you asked that i had misremembered and
went to dig up the citation, for which I apologize. The combination
of jet lag, museum fatigue, conference fatigue and not having the
report in front of me, i suspect were the contributing factors to my
misremembering. But then, these are also likely figures that are
likely to be underreported, and while the report is in PLOS, it is
just one study. The NIH reports the number of cases of medical
research investigations each year, so that might be another place to
look. The bias in the report is toward health data, but i don't doubt
it is generalizable to other fields. If we could easily define and
operationalize such mispractice in design research, I'd certainly
encourage someone to do a survey and see.
I'm not a person to use much 'data' as i tend to use texts and
ethnographic participation, but I will say that in my career i've
found many mis-citations, I wonder if that is the same sort of thing.
I don't mean 'incomplete, or improperly constructed citations' those
are just poor proofreading... I mean citations that were not to the
book, page number, referred to. That i find worrisome, especially
when i cannot find the actual book page number in their work, perhaps
it is a proofing error, but sometimes it could be more.
On Jun 28, 2009, at 11:32 PM, David Durling wrote:
> Jeremy,
>
> Thank you for the link to the report. It does indeed make
> interesting reading.
>
> I asked for the report because, having seen individual reports in
> the past, I did not believe that the figures you quoted were
> anything like correct. This report describes a serious systematic
> review of previous studies. In summary they say:
>
> It found that, on average, about 2% of scientists admitted to have
> fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a
> serious form of misconduct my any standard – and up to one third
> admitted a variety of other questionable research practices
> including “dropping data points based on a gut feeling”, and
> “changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response
> to pressures from a funding source”.
>
> So - rather than 6 per cent admitting to falsification of data, the
> reported weighted average is actually 1.9 per cent.
>
> Rather than 'upwards of 50 per cent' admitting to questionable
> practices, the reported figure indicates up to a third admitting to
> questionable practices, some of which may be small but nevertheless
> were felt by those individuals to be worth reporting.
>
> Many more did say that they knew of others who were guilty of dodgy
> practices. There is no indication of what any of this has to do with
> plagiarism.
>
> Most of the dodgy scientists were in medicine and pharmacology.
>
> I wondered how I might fare in answering such a survey. I have never
> knowingly falsified data, though if asked about others I might say
> that I have known of several cases where design researchers' data
> were worthless due to ignorance of process rather than deliberate
> massaging: these would include not controlling [or having too many]
> variables, inconsistencies in data collection, poor questionnaire
> design, bias, and hopeless optimism. Of course it might be argued
> that one dodgy practice is misreporting the results of surveys.
>
> I should also point out that my interpretation of this report is
> also partial and aimed at making a point, but does (I hope) state
> the figures accurately.
>
> David
>
> .........................................................................
>
> David Durling FDRS PhD http://durling.tel
> .........................................................................
>
>
>
> On 28 Jun 2009, at 9:05 am, jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>
>> I think we have to be careful to differentiate the actual bases of
>> academia versus the idealized norms. Given a recent report said a
>> significant number of scientists, upwards of of 50% admitted to lab
>> practices that may have undermined results and something like 6%
>> admitted to some for of falsification of data, academic honest I
>> would argue is much like general honest, we'd prefer the situation
>> where it was generally promoted, and less prefer the situation
>> where it was generally practiced. This I think you can roundly
>> see to be true when you look at the stories of just about any
>> technological revolution, you find ideas flowing quite freely,
>> plagiarized and not, for short periods as people become familiar
>> with the changes. I think the history of the concept of plagiarism
>> is particularly informative to the question of contemporary
>> copyright. The majority of the works that I teach in some of my
>> classes(as i teach ancient and medieval political theory,
>> machiavelli and other things sometimes).... have no citation that
>> was not entered after the fact. Citations and plagiarism came into
>> being somewhat together, and for a very particular reason that had
>> nothing to do with honesty, though today they seem to have to do
>> with concepts of 'honor codes' and 'honesty' than their original
>> goals of enabling research, and specifically enabling the finding
>> of research.
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