Scientists falsify data for a variety of reasons, often stemming from pressures within the research environment, personal ambition, or a lack of proper ethical training. These pressures can include career advancement, funding competition, and the "publish or perish" mentality, which can incentivize shortcuts like manipulating data or fabricating results to achieve desired outcomes.
It is commonly hypothesized that scientists are more likely to engage in data falsification and fabrication when they are subject to pressures to publish, when they are not restrained by forms of social control, when they work in countries lacking policies to tackle scientific misconduct, and when they are male.12 Apr 2017
They feel pressure to publish findings. They are curious to see if other scientists would be able to detect the data fabrication.16 Sept 2024
Examples of fabrication or falsification include the following: Artificially creating data when it should be collected from an actual experiment. Unauthorized altering or falsification of data, documents...
16 Nov 2015—When scientists falsify data, they try to cover it up by writing differently in their published works.
Figure 11. This chart, created by Mohammad Nurunnabi, represents the distribution of why articles are retracted, with a majority of cases being due to data fabrication or falsification. This data exemplifies just how great the problem of falsified data is, while also exhibiting the possibility of falsification to be recognized and handled accordingly.
