NPR

How A Budget Squeeze Can Lead To Sloppy Science And Even Cheating

The hypercompetitive world of biomedical research occasionally drives scientists to cheat. More often, scientists make decisions that undercut their results. That can lead colleagues astray.
Stories of outright misconduct are rare in science. But the pressures on researchers manifest in many more subtle ways, say social scientists studying the problem.

A funding crunch for scientific research is creating incentives for scientists to cut corners and even occasionally to cheat.

This is one of the findings in a new report about scientific integrity from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Sometimes scientists adopt sloppy practices that can lead to false conclusions. This can hamper progress in science. And taxpayer dollars are on the line.

Consider the story of a genetics lab at the University of Wisconsin. Mary Allen was a graduate student in that lab in 2005. One postdoctoral researcher had been laid off because of

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