Aubert Bonn Noémie, Pinxten Wim
Research Group of Healthcare and Ethics, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500, Hasselt, Belgium.
Res Integr Peer Rev. 2021 Jan 14;6(1):3. doi: 10.1186/s41073-020-00105-z.
Research misconduct and questionable research practices have been the subject of increasing attention in the past few years. But despite the rich body of research available, few empirical works also include the perspectives of non-researcher stakeholders.
We conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science. We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting.
Given the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series with the current paper focusing on the problems that affect the integrity and research culture. We first found that different actors have different perspectives on the problems that affect the integrity and culture of research. Problems were either linked to personalities and attitudes, or to the climates in which researchers operate. Elements that were described as essential for success (in the associate paper) were often thought to accentuate the problems of research climates by disrupting research culture and research integrity. Even though all participants agreed that current research climates need to be addressed, participants generally did not feel responsible nor capable of initiating change. Instead, respondents revealed a circle of blame and mistrust between actor groups.
Our findings resonate with recent debates, and extrapolate a few action points which might help advance the discussion. First, the research integrity debate must revisit and tackle the way in which researchers are assessed. Second, approaches to promote better science need to address the impact that research climates have on research integrity and research culture rather than to capitalize on individual researchers' compliance. Finally, inter-actor dialogues and shared decision making must be given priority to ensure that the perspectives of the full research system are captured. Understanding the relations and interdependency between these perspectives is key to be able to address the problems of science.
在过去几年中，科研不端行为和有问题的科研行为越来越受到关注。尽管有大量的研究，但很少有实证研究纳入非研究人员利益相关者的观点。
我们对政策制定者、资助者、机构负责人、编辑或出版商、科研诚信办公室成员、科研诚信社区成员、实验室技术人员、研究人员、研究生以及转行的前研究人员进行了半结构化访谈和焦点小组讨论，以探讨科学领域中成功、诚信和责任的相关话题。我们以佛兰芒生物医学领域为基线，以便能够把握系统环境中相互作用和互补的行为者的观点。
鉴于我们的研究结果范围广泛，我们将研究结果分为两篇系列论文，本文重点关注影响科研诚信和科研文化的问题。我们首先发现，不同的行为者对影响科研诚信和科研文化的问题有不同的看法。问题要么与个性和态度有关，要么与研究人员所处的环境有关。在相关论文中被描述为成功所必需的因素，往往被认为会通过扰乱科研文化和科研诚信来加剧科研环境问题。尽管所有参与者都认为当前的科研环境需要得到解决，但参与者普遍觉得自己没有责任也没有能力发起变革。相反，受访者揭示了行为者群体之间的指责和不信任循环。
我们的研究结果与近期的辩论相呼应，并推断出一些可能有助于推进讨论的行动要点。首先，科研诚信辩论必须重新审视并解决评估研究人员的方式。其次，促进更好科学的方法需要解决科研环境对科研诚信和科研文化的影响，而不是利用个别研究人员的合规行为。最后，必须优先进行行为者之间的对话和共同决策，以确保涵盖整个科研系统的观点。理解这些观点之间的关系和相互依存性是解决科学问题的关键。
