Using a database of 750 cases of research fraud from around the world, professors examine fraud as a phenomenon, tracing its history and trajectory and looking at what can be done about it.
When a researcher is busted for fraud, the exposure often trickles out from source to source. Whether it’s exposed by an institution, professional association, journal or the media, word gets out.
Depending on how big a deal a case is, it might make international headlines. Other times, the fraud is dealt with quietly. But why does it occur, and why does it keep occurring? From an environmental and organizational level, what can be done to combat research fraud? Is there something to be learned by examining fraud at a level beyond just the case-by-case stories, sometimes packaged in shock journalism with explosive headlines?
Those are the types of questions that caught the attention of Nachman Ben-Yehuda and Amalya Oliver-Lumerman, professors in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem — inspiring them to write their own catalog of the history and ramifications of research fraud in Fraud and Misconduct in Research: Detection, Investigation and Organizational Response (University of Michigan Press).
