Fraud, bias, iffy authorship ‘non-negligible practices’ in nuke med research | #phishing | #scams | #hacking | #aihp

Nuclear radiologists are overall confident in the scientific soundness of studies published within their field. Those working in Asia are especially trusting.

However, top peer-reviewed journals serving the subspecialty evidence nontrivial rates of scientific fraud, publication bias and honorary authorship.

This is the finding of researchers in the Netherlands who surveyed almost 2,000 corresponding authors of studies published in any of 15 general nuclear medicine journals in 2021.

Thomas Christian Kwee, MD, PhD, of Groningen University Medical Center and colleagues had their work published in the September edition of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine [1].

Of 254 recipients who completed the survey (12.4% of the field under review), some 54 researchers (21%) indicated they’d witnessed or suspected scientific fraud inside their department over the past five years.

A small but not inconsiderable slice, 11 corresponding authors (4.3%), owned up, albeit anonymously, to having acted dishonestly themselves.

In the U.S., the HHS’s Office of Research Integrity defines scientific fraud, or “research misconduct,” as “fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in proposing, performing or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.”