This is in response to Lewa’s post
The question….if the punishments for deliberately authoring or publishing misleading research are effective and serve as deterrents ?
As consumers of research the onus lies on us to determine whether the research we are counting on has been conducted ethically and honestly . There is a certain amount of trust that we have to have going in. Having said that who is holding the researchers accountable to the honesty of their research? I believe in part it is the responsibility of the journal or other resource that the study is being published in. One would hope that the peer-review process would also include a scrutiny of the elements that Lewa mentions in her post- namely technical errors, inconsistencies in research question and findings, conflicts of interest. Reading her comment made me think too whether there are punishments for publishing erroneous or misleading research. I anecdotally know that a doubtful publication can affect an authors’ credibility amongst their peers. I am not sure if there are any punishments meted out in legal terms or loss of licensure etc. I’m sure our prof can throw some light in this .
Reference
Ahmed, L. (2018, March 11). LDRS, Unit 10, Learning Activity 10.3 [Wordpress]. Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/lewa/2018/03/10/ldrs591-unit-10-learning-activity-10-3/
Here is an interesting article that speaks to the situation you are describing above:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/
This article talks about the now famous MMR vaccine and autism sensation from a study in 1998 and the implications for making fraudulent claims as a scientist. Yes, there are serious consequences that can occur for publishing misleading research.
Dr. Strong