The fact that the scientific community so proudly cherishes an image of itself as objective and scrupulously honest – a system where fraud is complete anathema – might, perversely, be what prevents it from spotting the bad actors in its midst. The very idea of villains like Macchiarini existing in science is so abhorrent that many adopt a see-no-evil attitude, overlooking even the most glaring signs of scientific misconduct. Others are in denial about the prevalence and the effects of fraud. But as we’ll see in this chapter, fraud in science is not the vanishingly rare scenario that we
...more
