This paper addresses the growing problem of retractions in the scientific literature of publications that contain bad data, also called “false science.” While the problem is particularly acute in the biomedical literature because of the life-threatening implications when treatment recommendations and decisions are based on false science, it is relevant for any knowledge domain, including the social sciences, law, and education. Yet current practices for handling retractions are seen as inadequate. We use the metaphor of a virus to illustrate (...) how such studies can spread and contaminate the knowledge system, when they continue to be treated as valid. We suggest drawing from public health models designed to prevent the spread of biological viruses and compare the strengths and weaknesses of the current governance model of professional self-regulation with a proposed public health governance model. The paper concludes by considering the value of adding a triple-helix model that brings industry into the university-state governance mechanisms and incorporates bibliometric capabilities needed for a holistic treatment of the retraction process. (shrink)

There are two types of stock price manipulation examined in the theoretical literature: insider trading, which involves private information that is true and the public spreading of fraudulent false information. While there is a large empirical literature on insider trading, this is the first empirical article to examine the impact of false, fraudulent public information on stock prices and trading volume. We find that such false information, even after being denied by a credible source such as the SEC, (...) generates both abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume. We also find that the effects of the false information on security returns and volume can be persistent for at least 2 weeks. In addition, we show that perpetrators of false news attacks can make potentially large profits from such market manipulations. (shrink)

The popular fascination with forensic science, DNA bio?banks and TV shows such as CSI have created a belief that the law can track down any criminal and that only a small sample from his or her body is needed to prove whether he or she is guilty or innocent. In recent years, however, there were a number of cases of forensic scientists tampering with DNA evidence. Psychoanalysis raises the question of whether such cases present us with individuals who derive a (...) perverse pleasure from making "mistakes" in their testimonies. For a pervert is not only someone who seeks a particular sexual pleasure , a pervert might very well be someone who enjoys the empowerment of speaking from a position of self-righteousness. When a forensic scientist goes to the extreme of making false claims about DNA evidence, we have the right to ask just why he or she relishes being an authority who can manipulate other people's lives. The question also exists as to why the legal profession has such a hard time questioning expert testimonies and why the public places such faith in the power of DNA. (shrink)

The popular fascination with forensic science, DNA bio?banks and TV shows such as CSI have created a belief that the law can track down any criminal and that only a small sample from his or her body is needed to prove whether he or she is guilty or innocent. In recent years, however, there were a number of cases of forensic scientists tampering with DNA evidence. Psychoanalysis raises the question of whether such cases present us with individuals who derive a (...) perverse pleasure from making "mistakes" in their testimonies. For a pervert is not only someone who seeks a particular sexual pleasure, a pervert might very well be someone who enjoys the empowerment of speaking from a position of self-righteousness. When a forensic scientist goes to the extreme of making false claims about DNA evidence, we have the right to ask just why he or she relishes being an authority who can manipulate other people's lives. The question also exists as to why the legal profession has such a hard time questioning expert testimonies and why the public places such faith in the power of DNA. (shrink)

Qualitative fieldwork research on sensitive topics sometimes requires that interviewees be granted confidentiality and anonymity. When qualitative researchers later publish their findings, they must ensure that any statements obtained during fieldwork interviews cannot be traced back to the interviewees. Given these protections to interviewees, the integrity of the published findings cannot usually be verified or replicated by third parties, and the scholarly community must trust the word of qualitative researchers when they publish their results. This trust is fundamentally abused, however, (...) when researchers publish articles reporting qualitative fieldwork data that they never collected. Using only publicly available information, I argue that a 2017 article in an Elsevier foreign policy and international relations journal presents anonymised fieldwork interviews that could not have occurred as described. As an exercise in post-publication peer review (PPPR), this paper examines the evidence that calls into question the reliability of the putative fieldwork quotations. I show further that the 2017 article is not a unique case. The anonymity and confidentiality protections common in some areas of research create an ethical problem: the protections necessary for obtaining research data can be used as a cover to hide substandard research practices as well as research misconduct. (shrink)

Among the many forms of research misconduct, publishing fraudulent data is considered to be serious where the confidence and validity of the research is detrimentally undermined. In this study, the trend of 303 retracted publications from 44 authors (with more than three retracted publications each) was analysed. The results showed that only 6.60% of the retracted publications were single-authored and the discovery of fraudulent publications had reduced from 52.24 months (those published before the year (...) 2000) to 33.23 months (those published on the year 2000 and onwards). It appears that with the widely accessible public databases like PubMed, fraudulent publications can be detected more easily. The different approaches adopted by authors who had previous publications retracted are also discussed herein. (shrink)

Individual and/or co-offenders fraudulent activities can have a devastating effect on a company’s reputation and credibility. Enron, Xerox, WorldCom, HIH Insurance and One.Tel are examples where stakeholders incurred substantial financial losses as a result of fraud and led to a loss of confidence in corporate dealings by the public in general. There are numerous theoretical approaches that attempt to explain how and why fraudulent acts occur, drawing on the fields of sociology, organisational, management and economic literature, but there (...) is limited empirical evidence published in accounting literature. This qualitative inductive study analyses perceptions and experiences of forensic accountants to gain insights into individual fraud and co-offending in order to determine whether the conceptual framework developed from literature accurately depicts the causes of fraud committed by individuals and groups in the twenty-first century. Findings from the study both support and extend the conceptual framework, demonstrating that strain and anomie can result in fraud, that deviant sub-groups recruit and coerce members by providing relief from strain, and that inadequate corporate governance mechanisms both contribute to fraud occurring, and provide the opportunity for fraudulent activities to be executed and often remain undetected. Additional factors emerging from this study (the ‘technoconomy’, addiction and IT measures) were also identified as contributors to fraud, particularly relevant to the twenty-first century, and consequently, a refined conceptual framework is presented in the discussion and conclusion to the paper. (shrink)

Job seekers find themselves increasingly duped and misled by fraudulent job advertisements, posing a threat to their privacy, security and well-being. There is a clear need for solutions that can protect innocent job seekers. Existing approaches to detecting fraudulent jobs do not scale well, function like a black-box, and lack interpretability, which is essential to guide applicants’ decision-making. Moreover, commonly used lexical features may be insufficient as the representation does not capture contextual semantics of the underlying document. Hence, (...) this paper explores to what extent different categorizations of fraudulent jobs can be classified. In addition, this paper seeks to find what type of features are most relevant in classifying the type of fraudulent job. In this paper, we develop and validate a machine learning system for identifying identity theft, corporate identity theft and multi-level marketing amongst fraudulent job advertisements. We utilized four classes of features: empirical rule set-based features, bag-of-word models, most recent state-of-the-art word embeddings and transformer models for various machine learning classifiers. The machine learning models were validated by evaluating them on a publicly available job description dataset. Our results indicate that the word embeddings and transformer-based features consistently outperformed the handcrafted rule-set based features class. Ultimately, a Gradient Boosting classifier with a combination of empirical rule-set based features, parts-of-speech tags and bag-of-words vectors achieved the best performance with an F1-score of 0.88. (shrink)

Individual and/or co-offenders fraudulent activities can have a devastating effect on a company’s reputation and credibility. Enron, Xerox, WorldCom, HIH Insurance and One.Tel are examples where stakeholders incurred substantial financial losses as a result of fraud and led to a loss of confidence in corporate dealings by the public in general. There are numerous theoretical approaches that attempt to explain how and why fraudulent acts occur, drawing on the fields of sociology, organisational, management and economic literature, but there (...) is limited empirical evidence published in accounting literature. This qualitative inductive study analyses perceptions and experiences of forensic accountants to gain insights into individual fraud and co-offending in order to determine whether the conceptual framework developed from literature accurately depicts the causes of fraud committed by individuals and groups in the twenty-first century. Findings from the study both support and extend the conceptual framework, demonstrating that strain and anomie can result in fraud, that deviant sub-groups recruit and coerce members by providing relief from strain, and that inadequate corporate governance mechanisms both contribute to fraud occurring, and provide the opportunity for fraudulent activities to be executed and often remain undetected. Additional factors emerging from this study were also identified as contributors to fraud, particularly relevant to the twenty-first century, and consequently, a refined conceptual framework is presented in the discussion and conclusion to the paper. (shrink)

Individual and/or co-offenders fraudulent activities can have a devastating effect on a company’s reputation and credibility. Enron, Xerox, WorldCom, HIH Insurance and One.Tel are examples where stakeholders incurred substantial financial losses as a result of fraud and led to a loss of confidence in corporate dealings by the public in general. There are numerous theoretical approaches that attempt to explain how and why fraudulent acts occur, drawing on the fields of sociology, organisational, management and economic literature, but there (...) is limited empirical evidence published in accounting literature. This qualitative inductive study analyses perceptions and experiences of forensic accountants to gain insights into individual fraud and co-offending in order to determine whether the conceptual framework developed from literature accurately depicts the causes of fraud committed by individuals and groups in the twenty-first century. Findings from the study both support and extend the conceptual framework, demonstrating that strain and anomie can result in fraud, that deviant sub-groups recruit and coerce members by providing relief from strain, and that inadequate corporate governance mechanisms both contribute to fraud occurring, and provide the opportunity for fraudulent activities to be executed and often remain undetected. Additional factors emerging from this study were also identified as contributors to fraud, particularly relevant to the twenty-first century, and consequently, a refined conceptual framework is presented in the discussion and conclusion to the paper. (shrink)

Redundant publication in biomedical sciences is the presentation of the same information or data set more than once. Forms of redundant publication include “salami slicing”, in which similar text accompanies data presented in disaggregated fashion in different publications and “duplicate or multiple publication” in which identical information is presented with a virtually identical text. Estimates of prevalence of the phenomenon put it at 10 to 25% of published literature. Redundant publication can be considered unethical, or fraudulent, when the (...) author(s) attempt to conceal the existence of duplicate publication from editors and readers. Redundant publication in the area of clinical trials is potentially dangerous as it tends to overestimate the effects of interventions. The scientific community at large and governments should take urgent steps to safeguard the public from the possible effects of fraudulent multiple publications. (shrink)

Academic publishing is undergoing a highly transformative process, and many established rules and value systems that are in place, such as traditional peer review (TPR) and preprints, are facing unprecedented challenges, including as a result of post-publication peer review. The integrity and validity of the academic literature continue to rely naively on blind trust, while TPR and preprints continue to fail to effectively screen out errors, fraud, and misconduct. Imperfect TPR invariably results in imperfect papers that have passed through varying (...) levels of rigor of screening and validation. If errors or misconduct were not detected during TPR’s editorial screening, but are detected at the post-publication stage, an opportunity is created to correct the academic record. Currently, the most common forms of correcting the academic literature are errata, corrigenda, expressions of concern, and retractions or withdrawals. Some additional measures to correct the literature have emerged, including manuscript versioning, amendments, partial retractions and retract and replace. Preprints can also be corrected if their version is updated. This paper discusses the risks, benefits and limitations of these forms of correcting the academic literature. (shrink)

This paper aims to perform a multi-level analysis of the Irish public discourse on Covid-19. Despite widespread agreement that Ireland’s response was rapid and effective, the country’s journey through the pandemic has been no easy ride. In order to contain the virus, the Government’s emergency legislation imposed draconian measures including the detention and isolation of people deemed to be even “a potential source of infection” and a significant extension of An Garda Síochána’s power of arrest. In April 2020, journalists John (...) Waters and Gemma O’Doherty initiated judicial review proceedings before the High Court to challenge such legislation, which they defined as unconstitutional, “disproportionate” and based on “fraudulent science”. The proceedings attracted widespread media coverage in what soon became a debate on the legitimacy of emergency legislation and the notion of ‘fake news’ itself. After a brief survey of the legislative background to Ireland’s Covid response, the argumentative strategy is analysed through which the High Court eventually dismissed Mr Waters and Ms O’Doherty’s challenge. Focusing on the process of justification of the judicial decision, the paper provides a descriptive account of the argument structure of the Court’s decision. This sheds light on the pattern of multiple argumentation through which the Court interpreted relevant norms in the Constitution and at once re-established the primacy of “facts” informing political decision-making at a time of national emergency. (shrink)

Peer review process helps in evaluating and validating of research that is published in the journals. U.S. Office of Research Integrity reported that data fraudulence was found to be involved in 94% cases of misconduct from 228 identified articles between 1994–2012. If fraud in published article are significantly as high as reported, the question arise in mind, were these articles peer reviewed? Another report said that the reviewers failed to detect 16 cases of fabricated article of Jan Hendrick Schon. Superficial (...) peer reviewing process does not reveals suspicion of misconduct. Lack of knowledge of systemic review process not only demolish the academic integrity in publication but also loss the trust of the people of the institution, the nation, and the world. The aim of this review article is to aware stakeholders specially novice reviewers about the peer review system. Beginners will understand how to review an article and they can justify better action choices in dealing with reviewing an article. (shrink)

When more scientists describe independently the same species under different valid Latin names, a case of synonymy occurs. In such a case, the international nomenclature rules stipulate that the first name to appear on a peer-reviewed publication has priority over the others. Based on a recent episode involving priority determination between two competing names of the same fungal plant pathogen, this letter wishes to open a discussion on the ethics of scientific publications and points out the necessity of a (...) correct management of the information provided through personal communications, whose traceability would prevent their fraudulent or accidental manipulation. (shrink)

The recent Minnesota case of In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes illustrates an emerging class of cases where a dispute between a family proxy and a hospital over “medical futility” requires legal resolution. The case was further complicated by the patient’s spouse who fraudulently claimed to be the patient’s designated health care proxy and who misrepresented the patient’s previously expressed treatment preferences. Barnes demonstrates the degree of significant administrative and institutional support to the health care team, ethics consultants, and (...) futility committees that is required when a futility dispute escalates to the need for judicial resolution. An institutional futility policy, especially one that is endorsed by other regional medical centers and organizations, is an important foundation for a hospital that seeks judicial support in a dispute over medical futility in end of life care. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For once, (...) Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

Economist-philosopher Amartya Sen's writings on social and political issues have attracted wide audiences. Section 2 introduces his contributions on: how people reason as agents within society; social determinants of people's (lack of) access to goods and of the effective freedoms and agency they enjoy or lack; and associated advocacy of self-specification of identity and high expectations for ‘voice’ and reasoning democracy. Section 3 considers his relation to social theory, his tools for theorizing action in society, and his limited degree of (...) attention to work by sociologists and to capitalism and power structures. Section 4 characterizes a style marked by conceptual refinement, emphases on complexity and individuality, including personal individuality, and reformist optimism. Section 5 shows the features from Sections 3 and 4 at work in his conception of personhood that advocates freedom to make a reasoned composition of personal identity. Similarly, Section 6 addresses his conception of public reasoning and neglect of the sociology of democracy. It contrasts the ideal of a reasoning polity with features in many countries. Sen's programmes for critical autonomy in personhood and for reasoned politics play, nevertheless, a normic role, while his analytical formats help investigation of obstacles to more widespread agency, voice, and democratic participation. (shrink)

This is the third in a series of essays on the seminal role of the paradigms of essence-function and interpenetration in East Asian religious and philosophical thought. The first article, entitled "The Composition of Self-Transformation Thought in Classical East Asian Philosophy and Religion"[1] was a general introduction to these paradigms over the broad expanse of indigenous East Asian thought religious/philosophical thought. The second article, entitled "Essence-Function (t'i-yung): Early Chinese Origins and Manifestations,"[2] examined the earliest precursors of these notions in classics (...) such as the Book of Changes, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean , paying special attention to the unique role played by the concept of "sincerity" in manifesting and mediating presence of essencefunction and interpenetration. In this essay, we look at the role essence-function and interpenetration play in the Analects (Lunyu ). (shrink)

By Jerome Rothenberg. Contributions by Steven Clay, Rodney Phillips.