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Guilt by association: How scientific misconduct harms prior collaborators

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  • Hussinger, Katrin
  • Pellens, Maikel

Abstract

Recent highly publicized cases of scientific misconduct have raised concerns about its consequences for academic careers. Previous and anecdotal evidence suggests that these reach far beyond the fraudulent scientist and (his or) her career, affecting coauthors and institutions. Here we show that the negative effects of scientific misconduct spill over to uninvolved prior collaborators: compared to a control group, prior collaborators of misconducting scientists, who have no connection to the misconduct case, are cited 8–9% less often afterwards. We suggest that the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is stigmatization by mere association. The result suggests that scientific misconduct generates large indirect costs in the form of mistrust towards a wider range of research findings than was previously assumed. The far-reaching fallout of misconduct implies that potential whistleblowers might be disinclined to make their concerns public in order to protect their own reputation and career.

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  • Hussinger, Katrin & Pellens, Maikel, 2019. "Guilt by association: How scientific misconduct harms prior collaborators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 516-530.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:2:p:516-530
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2018.01.012
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    Cited by:

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    2. Rainer Widmann & Michael E. Rose & Marina Chugunova, 2023. "Allegations of Sexual Misconduct, Accused Scientists, and Their Research," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 419, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    3. Khezr, Peyman & Mohan, Vijay, 2022. "The vexing but persistent problem of authorship misconduct in research," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    4. Horton, Joanne & Krishna Kumar, Dhanya & Wood, Anthony, 2020. "Detecting academic fraud using Benford law: The case of Professor James Hunton," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(8).
    5. Mohan, Vijay, 2019. "On the use of blockchain-based mechanisms to tackle academic misconduct," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    6. Salandra, Rossella & Criscuolo, Paola & Salter, Ammon, 2021. "Directing scientists away from potentially biased publications: the role of systematic reviews in health care," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    7. Anna Abalkina & Alexander Libman, 2020. "The real costs of plagiarism: Russian governors, plagiarized PhD theses, and infrastructure in Russian regions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2793-2820, December.
    8. Katrin Hussinger & Maikel Pellens, 2019. "Scientific misconduct and accountability in teams," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-12, May.
    9. Gilles Grolleau & Naoufel Mzoughi, 2022. "How research institutions can make the best of scandals – once they become unavoidable," Post-Print hal-03908837, HAL.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Scientific misconduct; Prior collaborators; Stigma;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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