Scientific fraud and the power structure of science

Abstract

Scientific research typically has been established on high ethical standards created by researchers in research institutions and universities. Scientific misconduct violates these ethical standards. It can take different shapes, such as plagiarism, falsification of data, and irresponsible authorship. The primary focus of this paper is to show the most extreme cases of fraud which are obvious: manufacturing data and altering experimental results. This is illustrated by showing the fraudulent misconduct in an article published in a corrosion science journal in order to encourage the scientific community to develop mores and guidelines that prescribe professional conduct in the routine developing and publishing of scientific works. This paper also presents a proposal that involves conducting data audits of submitted manuscripts to prevent the publication of fraudulent work. The few cases described in this article serve as a ritual cleaning of the house of science. It helps to paint the rest of scientific behavior as blameless.