Question

As The New York Times reported, “Every day, on average, a scientific paper is retracted because of misconduct.” Two percent of scientists are willing to admit that they have manipulated their data to suit their purposes. Considering that researchers publish about 2 million articles each year, 2 percent is not a negligible number. The Office of Research Integrity within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has cracked down on at least a dozen researchers for irregularities such as plagiarism and fabrication of results. What might motivate such misconduct, and why is it a serious offense?

Answer 1

Researchers or scientists are generally inclined towards manipulating their data in order to make it look favorable as per the research conducted by them. They are under pressure to publish articles quickly sometimes and in order to do so, they neglect quality research and do it just for the sake of it by fudging numbers and manipulating data. Also sometimes they do not like to work hard on their research topic and want results without putting any efforts. Hence they are inclined towards such kind of manipulation.

This is a serious offense because there are a lot of people who refer the research articles and use it for their working. Since the data is distorted, hence these people are not able to get real benefits out of the research. Siñxe the research articles misguide the people, hence these are considered as serious offense.