Street research market: dealing with scientific misconduct in Iran
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(2020) 21:78
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Street research market: dealing with scientific misconduct in Iran Homayoun Sadeghi-Bazargani1, Leila Nikniaz2* and Hamid Reza Yousefi Nodeh3
Abstract Background: Scientific misconduct is a prevalent phenomenon with many undesirable consequences. In Iran, no original research have been done about scientific fraud. So, this study aimed at describing a challenging research misconduct in Iran, its related causes, and the ways Iranian authorities deal with it. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, through a two-year period, all the advertisements installed in the study sites were collected and the content analysis was performed. Semi-structured interviews were held with experts for discovering the causes of misconduct. Also, published issues were collected for review of the laws on confronting the fraud in Iran. Results: The content analysis resulted in identifying four categories of misconduct issues: advertising approach, types of services, outcome guarantee, and justifying the academic credit. Besides, reviewing the related literature indicated that Iranian government and the responsible authorities have recently established serious penalties for dealing with scientific misconduct through legislation. Conclusions: This study revealed some misconduct in scientific activities which has persuaded the authorities to enforce strict rules to deal with it. The effectiveness of this legislation needs to be investigated in some further studies. Keywords: Street research, Scientific misconduct, Iran, Legislation
Background Misconduct refers to the planned and consciously fabrication, misrepresentation, or plagiarism of scientific research [1]. Scientific misconduct is a prevalent phenomenon that the scholastic organizations have challenged with it over the history of scientific publication and had many undesirable consequences [2]. Several studies in different countries have shown that misconduct is considered as a global issue not restricted to a special country and unfortunately the evidence is growing. Although not all the retractions are due to fraud, a recent review has stated that since 1975, 10-fold increase was shown in retractions of scientific articles due to * Correspondence: [email protected] 2 Tabriz Health Services Management Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Daneshgah Street, Tabriz, Iran Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
fraud [2]. Fraud, plagiarism and duplicate publication were attributed to 43.4, 9.8 and 14.2% of cases, respectively. Error was attributable to only 21.3% of cases. Seventy-five percent of fraud related retractions belonged to Japan, China and the United States [3]. Today, with the increasing number of scientists, novel practices of misconduct in the educational systems of the world has existed [4]. Nevertheless, it is less common to recognize the research misconduct practices and the public and governments’ reactions to them in different countries [4]. Recently, a report was publi
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