ETHICS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................... 1
2. ETHICS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ......................................................................................... 2
3. SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT CASES ............................................................................................. 4
3.1 A Case of Plagiarism: Danuţ Marcu ............................................................................................... 4
3.2 Scandal of Personality and Fetal Diseases Hans J Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek
5
3.3 PubMed: Online Tool for Discovering Plagiraism ......................................................................... 6
3.4 Last Word .......................................................................................................................................... 6
4. REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................... 7
 1. INTRODUCTION

In the last decades caring has been increased in scientific research since it is the very
powerful tool used to develop and improve performance in every field, and in planning,
managing, implementation and development any project for better efficiency and
effectiveness.
This interest in scientific research represents in supporting students and researchers
and improving the financial support for scientific research in order to open the way for
new ideas and technologies to become real and overcome obstacles facing the
students and researchers. Not only this, but also through providing helpful and strong
environment that guarantee rights of them.
The main goal of this research is to discuss ethics of scientific research that should be
taken in mind by researchers during their work, and also discuss fetal and regular
mistakes researchers make in their work. We also going to discuss scientific scandals
that happen in the last years showing how these papers and researches were violating
ethics of scientific research.

What Is Scientific Research?

Scientific research may be defined as a process of fact-finding through organized ways
and scientific approaches, planned before starting research, meant to prove theory,
develop it or improve it. [1]

Classifications of Scientific Research

Scientific research classified based on many ways such as information gathering
techniques and causality relationships and so on. [4]
According to information gathering techniques: scientific research may be observational
or experimental. [4]
According to causality relationships: it can be descriptive or analytical. [4]

Characteristics of a Good Research

- Organized process meant to provide a solution for scientific, social or
experimental problem. [2]
- Logical process the researcher wants, through it, to make progress in solving
problem via facts and harmonic, consecutive steps supporting each other.
- Experimental process starts with facts passing through processes and
observations and end up with applying results obtained. [2]
- Well trusted process that can be repeated many times ended with the same or
close results. [2]

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There are too many characteristics that can describe effectiveness and quality of a
scientific research but these are the most important ones, beside that we will discuss
ethics that any researcher must follow to end up with a morally practical research.

2. ETHICS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Before starting in mentioning ethics we should first define what does it mean by ethics
of scientific research. Ethics of scientific research is a branch of Deontology, which
concerns with applying ethical principles in scientific research by students and
researchers. [10]

Difference Between Ethics and Law

Law is a number of rules made by group of people meant to save their rights through
punishing criminals and apply justice. These rules enforced through government or
social organizations. [4]
Ethics, on the other hand, is a branch of philosophy which interested in defining what is
good and what is bad for individual and society. It consists of a system of moral
principles to determine what must be done as a duty and what is forbidden. It may
agree or disagree with law as the last one change from place to another, but ethics
remain the constant everywhere. [3]
Too many researches and papers have been discussed ethics of scientific research,
each one ended up with some moral principles that should be taken in mined when
making a research. In this paper we will analyze those researches, collect data from
each one to end up with the most important principles must be considered.
In general, any principle of these ethical principles related to one or more of the
following categories:
- Ethical scientific research
- Behavior of researchers and ethical conduct
- Ethical treatment of research participants
These principles are:
1. Avoid Emotion
The emotional personality affect the research badly and hinder the systematic
and scientific development of thinking. [3]
2. Duty to Society
The research must contribute in the growth of society, through solving problem or
provide a development in any area. [4]
3. Fairness and Objectivity
The researcher should be objective in his research and discuss his opponent
with scientific evidence to reach the truth. [3]

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 4. Conflict of Interest
The researchers should minimize influences that could affect results of the
research including financial and other things that may affect researchers
neutrality. Financial support from a certain organization should not affect
research results to become useful for this organization, instead participants
should be honest in their results. [4]
5. Qualification of Scientific Research
Which mean that, researcher himself shouldn't be involved in any topic he didn't
have the required knowledge to make a research in it. [2]
6. Integrity
Which means that researchers should be honest and truthful. They must not
fabricate data or falsify results or omit relevant data. Their findings must be
reported as it is without bias. [4]
7. Respect Intellectual Property
One of the most important principles the researcher must consider. They
shouldn't steal other people work and claim that it is their work. [2]
8. Nondiscrimination
Researchers should try to minimize or eliminate attempts to reduce research
benefits on a certain group and deny it on another one. [2]
9. Purposeful criticism
During research writing the criticism must be purposeful. The researcher must
not turn into just critic. [3]
10. Not influenced by thoughts or people
The researcher must deal with the idea despite its popularity or effect e.g.
supporting idea because specific person say it or support it. [3]
11. Digital Recording
The researcher shouldn’t record pictures, videos or audios for those who
targeted without their permission. This must be before starting not after. [3]
These are the most important principles must be followed through the implementation of
a scientific research.
UNESCO in 1974 published a recommendations for successful scientific research which
contained the following:
- Providing literary and financial support for researchers
- As a businessman need researchers in your work you should try your best to
become a good idol for others
- Providing helpful environment for those researchers
- Providing suitable salary for researchers without discrimination.
Any research must be subjected to these principles, but unfortunately there was
scientific scandals avoided these principles completely. We will now discuss some of
them explaining the violations in these researches.

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 3. SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT CASES

In this section we will mention some of the most famous scientific misconduct cases,
discussing some of them and the violations found.
[6], [7]

3.1 A Case of Plagiarism: Danuţ Marcu

Danut Macu is a Romanian mathematician and computer scientist has a Ph.D. from the
university of Bucharest in 1981. In 2002 he submitted a short paper to 4OR journal with
the name " “Some results on the independence number of a graph".
When paper sent to journal refereeing, the first one ask for a revision and the second
one discovered that the paper is a copy of the paper by J. B. Shearer " The
independence number of dense graphs with large odd girth"!. "it was the first time I
discovered 100% plagiarism in math publications" the second referee said. It was
not the first time Marcu did this actually, earlier before this scandal he wrote a letter
which was totally plagiarist. He panned from publishing in the journal. By investigations
it turns up that he had many papers that contains misconduct and some papers
plagiarist totally. Three famous papers of him turned to be plagiarist totally which are:

- D. Marcu, The Chromatic Number of Triangle-Free Regular Graphs, Studia

Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Series Informatica, 47 (1), 2002, p. 54-56.
- D. Marcu, A Note on the Chromatic Number of a Graph, Studia Universitatis
Babes-Bolyai Series Informatica, 47 (2), 2002, p. 105-106.
- D. Marcu, A Note on the Chromatic and Independence Number of a Graph,
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Series Informatica, 48 (2), 2003, p. 11-16.
These papers unavailable in journal's website now, but unfortunately he succeed
publishing them in another journal. He now panned from publishing in many scientific
journals.
As we have seen the man is a plagiarist which is the worst thing a researcher can be.
As we mentioned before researchers must be honest. These papers violate the
principles of integrity and respect intellectual property. Beside it is not just unethical it is
also violating law.
People like Danut Marcu must get punished in order to avoid such cases again.

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[8], [9]

3.2 Scandal of Personality and Fetal Diseases Hans J Eysenck and

Ronald Grossarth-Maticek

Pelosi, a psychiatrist at Priory Hospital Glasgow, in the early 1990s, published two
extensive critiques of the work of Hans Eysenck, the twentieth-century psychology
giant. Pelosi said that many of Hans Eysenck's researches are questionable, not only
Pelosi who said that but many others have criticized him after her, but unfortunately,
these criticisms did not ultimately lead to official investigations.
After more than two decades, Eysenck is finally falling from his pedestal. This indicates
the seriousness of the matter as no serious step was taken, even after Dr. Pelosi
published her criticisms for more than 30 years and with a scientist who is not obscure,
but that when he died, Eysenck was the third most cited psychologist in the world.
Pelosi's criticisms have focused on only one area of Eysenck's research: the
relationship between personality and health, specifically cancer and cardiovascular
disease. Pelosi writes that this work, which is based on data collected by Grossarth-
Maticek in Germany, showed startling evidence, he says, of "cancer-prone" and "heart
disease-prone" personality types. People with a personality at risk of cancer were 40,
60, or even 70 times higher than people with a "healthy" personality, they said. "These
are huge numbers that are unimaginable in epidemiology," Pelosi says. Eysenck and
Grossarth-Maticek also reported on a clinical trial that showed behavioral therapy can
significantly reduce the risk of death.
Other studies that investigated the relationship between personality, stress, and health
conditions in general stated that different risk factors increase the risk of death by less
than a factor of two. Another study confirmed that there were no links between
personality and the deaths reported in Eysenck's work.
Eysenck had received funding through Jacob & Medinger, which was working on behalf
of the tobacco industry, and Eysenck himself stated in an interview in 1994 that he had
contacted Reynolds to finance the continuation of the research and when he was asked
what he felt about the tobacco industry lawyers ’participation in the scientists’ selection
for research projects He said the research should be judged on its quality and not on
the one who paid for it. According to the British newspaper The Independent, Eysenck
had received more than 800,000 pounds in this way.
As Pelosi said " the quality of his research studies must be judged and a real
investigation should be opened".
As we can notice how money could affect people principles and lead to disasters in
science. Such results if not reviewed will increase number of cancer victims just to serve
tobacco makers and increase sales volume of tobacco companies. Eysenck and

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Maticek violated ethic of scientific research and their mistakes could kill many people so
a real investigation must open and they must pay the price of what they did. This must
be a lesson for every researcher to be honest and never affect by any thing and make
his goal serving humanity despite the reward.
[11]

3.3 PubMed: Online Tool for Discovering Plagiraism

In 1997 a case of plagiarism was discovered using PubMed online tool for discovering
plagiarism. The tool was providing a feature called “see related articles”. A professor of
biochemistry and department chairman at a medical school in Central Europe which has
140 articles published is the hero of this case. He translated a full article from English in
1995 and published it as original research. The man didn’t get litigated because the
plagiarism discovered after three years from publishing.
Pelosi discovered (using the same tool) that 20 articles of his work was taken from
medical journals. Most of these articles published in his native language in national
journals and few published in English in European journals.
Most of editors of journals he steal from it inform plagiarism and the problem
unfortunately doesn’t solved.
Again we are facing plagiarism case, the culprit depends on readers language and
weakness of technology available that time. Thank God now we have too many tools to
discover such things early.

3.4 Last Word

The main goal of mentioning these stories is to prove that stealer will be discovered no
matter how famous and smart he was, and the case of Eysenck the well known
professor prove that. Also to remined researchers that such crimes will destroy their
truthfulness and any good work they have done. Remember always that the way to
reach a noble goal must be noble also.

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 4. REFERENCES

[1] What is scientific research and how can it be done. Ceyda Ozhan, Asli Donmez
[2] American Association for the Advancement of Science, “AAAS, China, and Ethics in Science.” 2018.
As of March 8, 2019:
https://www.aaas.org/programs/scientific-responsibility-human-rights-law/
aaas-china-and-ethics-science

[3] European Commission, “Reducing the Risk of Exporting Non Ethical Practices to Third Countries,”
GARRI-6-2014, request for proposals, December 10, 2013. As of March 8, 2019:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/garri-6-2014.
Html

[4] An examination of ethical principles and emerging topics. Cortney Weinbaum, Eric Landree, Marjory
S. Blumenthal, Tepring Piquado, Carlos Ignacio Gutierrez.

[5] Personality and fetal diseases: Revisiting a scientific scandal. Anthony Pelosi.

[6] A case of plagiarism: Danut Marcu. Denis Bouyssou, Frank Plastria.

[7] Cases of unethical behavior. 4OR website: http://www.4or.be/Plagiarism.html

[8] Misconduct allegations push psychology hero off his pedestal. Cathleen O'Grady.

[9] The Hans Eysenck affair: Time to correct the scientific record. David F. Marks.

[10] Peter Singer. https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethics-philosophy

[11] The responsibilities of academic institutions and professional organizations after accusations of
scientific misconduct. Anthony Pelosi