A Theory of Fraud

Most scientists are concerned to pursue the truth, and many are concerned to produce elegant explanations of the phenomena they study. However, there is an enormous literature suggesting that scientists also operate within a credit economy, which rewards priority in accordance with scientific norms (e.g., Dasgupta and David 1994; Kitcher 1990; Latour and Woolgar 1979: ch.

To begin with, most proponents of the theory of the scientific credit economy hold that scientists seek glory and esteem from their peers. Explicit markers of being held in high esteem include having numerous people cite one’s work and discuss it favorably; receiving prestigious prizes or commendations; and having things like theorems, body parts, or disorders named in one’s honor (cf. Cole and Cole 1970). They also include material and social advantages, such as the ease of finding a job, the location of the job that one receives, and the sorts of grants that one is likely to receive. Each of these factors, and many others besides, track and influ­ence one’s standing within the scientific community.

Credit is typically attained through priority, that is, by being seen as the first scientist to have established some matter of scientific interest (cf Merton 1957). And it is commonly acknowledged that ascriptions of priority are governed by scientific norms, which specify when something should be counted as a successful discovery. We use the term “norms” loosely, as a way of covering any form of behavior that a community expects you to engage in, and would think it improper for you to deviate from. We cannot survey the literature on the social epi- stemic consequences of scientific social norms here (e.g., Bright et al. 2018; Heesen 2017b; Longino 1990; Mayo-Wilson 2014; Rubin and O’Connor, forthcoming). However, for our purposes, the important point is that scientific norms govern which research topics are worth pursuing, where things should be published, and the conditions under which scientific claims should be evaluated. For example, it is a norm that scientific claims should be published in accredited venues, and not just distributed over email or social media; and it is a norm that accredited venues should have a process of peer review, which verifies that the epistemic and social norms of a particular research community are properly upheld (Zuckerman and Merton 1971). This peer review process should ensure that proper statistical procedures or experimental protocols are followed; it should ensure that past priority claims are acknowledged through citation; and it should ensure that fraudulent claims are not entered into the scientific record.

Where things go well, aspirant credit seekers will have their work verified as following the proper epistemic and social protocols. Their work will be published and publicized by the journal they have submitted to. And this will allow them to gain whatever credit the scientific commu­nity sees fit to dispense when priority is granted for the discovery. However, in some contexts the norms that govern the assignment of scientific credit through priority can also tempt people to commit fraud, even though there are scientific norms against doing so. For, while many scientists are committed to the pursuit of truth, “a more immediate objective often intrudes into vision, that of establishing credit” (Broad and Wade 1982: 52—3). And in some contexts, scientists may come to feel that fraudulent means are the only ones available for establishing pri­ority on interesting discoveries. The pressure to pursue credit can therefore produce incentives to fabricate or manipulate data. This tends to happen where people’s personal commitment to the restraining epistemic and social norms of science have been weakened; and this is especially likely where institutional pressures disincentivize the pursuit of truth, and where people begin to think that they will be able to get away with questionable research practices because pre­publication checking mechanisms turn out to be incapable of reliably detecting and preventing the publication of fraudulent research (cf. Ben-Yahuda 1986; Braxton 1993; Casadevall and Fang 2012; Sovacool 2008; Zuckerman 1984) What is important is that the desire for credit, and the ability to achieve it through establishing priority in accredited journals, can exist even where the commitment to the epistemic norms of science are either lacking or overpowered. In such cases, pre-publication checking mechanisms are rarely strong enough to prevent fraud from occurring.² Such effects are commonly acknowledged, even by those who are not entirely sym­pathetic to the standard theory of the cause of fraud. For example, a recent empirical study by Fanelli et al. (2015: 13), suggests that the motivation for committing fraud is “to gain an unfair advantage in the race for priority and success.” And in a paper focused on the case of ghost­management in pharmaceutical research, Elliot and Landa (2010) argue that “the structural logic of pharmaceutical public relations [i.e., the socially entrenched credit economy in pharmaceutical research] prevents its practitioners from engaging in ethical scientific communication, even if, as individuals, they are well intentioned.” We return to a more detailed account of these institu­tional pressures in section 25.3. But for now, we simply suggest that a plausible understanding of what generates scientific fraud must acknowledge the impact of the credit economy.

25.2