Only a small fraction of research misconduct ever comes to light. Independent investigative bodies could remedy that.
(11 Aug 2020) From Nature Index:
Only a small fraction of research misconduct ever comes to light. What’s more, many commonplace research misbehaviors are categorized as questionable research practices (QRPs) rather than outright misconduct.
That includes publication bias, where scholarly journals favorably publish positive results over negative ones; p-hacking, where a researcher plays around with data until they meet significance thresholds; and cherry-picking, or selective reporting of data.
Other QRPs include HARKing — Hypothesizing After the Results are Known, where researchers search for trends in already collected data — and publishing the same study twice.
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