Select what you consider a recent or current controversy of falsifying or hiding psychological or medical research results from the general public in the past 6 months. This excludes the research cited by Dr. Oz or the controversy regarding Andrew Wakefield regarding Autism and Vaccines.

Do you think there should be any legal consequences for these actions? Why or why not?

What penalties would you suggest? Please cite your examples. 250 words min.

 

Real World Bias in Reporting Research

Science can tackle some of the most serious issues in the community, and scientists must be acknowledged by society, and they should also believe in each other. Science can solve some of modern society's pressing issues, but scientists must be trusted by people and able to trust one other's work for that to happen. However, a high level of research, Plagiarism, fabrications, and falsification have been reported in the recent past. A recent case is that of Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser who acquired fame through his impressive work on the origin of morality and cognition. The office of research integrity is currently investigating it. It is suspected that he has fabricated and falsified methods and data in the six studies funded by the federal state (Couzin-Frankel, 2020).

In my opinion, there should be legal consequences on the researchers who use fabricated and false information or those that copy others people's work without giving proper acknowledgment to the original owner of the work. Falsified research could bring mishaps and can be misleading to the public and other researchers, and at the time, it can lead to grave consequences. The Policy measures that could help reduce the research falsifications are change of institutional culture, increased training and supervision of ethical research conduct, and, most notably, doubling the blindness of all grant evaluations. For those that defy the set rules and standards, I would suggest hefty fines and imprisonment depending on the weight of the study conducted in that manner. I would also recommend blocking such researchers such that any research they conduct will not be regarded in feature.