Fraud by senior researchers has a terrible impact on junior researchers who have invested in the project. Institutions need to make greater efforts to support junior researchers in this regard
In the hierarchy of academic science, grad students and postdocs often get a raw deal — long hours, little pay, and short-term contracts. But the arrangement can be made even worse by unscrupulous supervisors who, in cases of fraud, all too often take their underlings down with them.
That was the experience of a young neuroscientist in Australia who was cut adrift in 2013 by her institution in the wake of a misconduct scandal involving her lab head that she had nothing to do with.
A year earlier, another graduate student in Australia put his doctoral degree in peril after questioning a paper by a supervisor later found to have committed misconduct — after which the supervisor was forced to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants.
