Cases of scientific fraud and research misconduct in general have escalated in Western higher education over the last 20 years. These practices include forgery, distortion of facts and plagiarism, the outright faking of research results and thriving black markets for positive peer reviews and ghost-written papers. More recently, the same abuses have found their way into Asian higher education with some high profile and widely covered cases in India, South Korea, China and Japan. Reports of misconduct are now reaching alarming proportions in Asia, and the negative consequences for individuals, institutions, governments and society at large are incalculable. The incentives for academic scientists in Asia are approaching and even surpassing those ordinarily seen in the West. Cash payments for publishing articles in high impact journals can double or even triple yearly salaries in some cases. Combining this environment with the simultaneous pressure to obtain oftentimes scarce funding for research has produced a culture of unethical behaviour worldwide. This article assesses three important issues regarding scientific fraud and research misconduct: distorted incentives for research and overreliance upon metrics, damage to the integrity of higher education and public trust and improving research environments so as to deter unethical behaviour. This is especially crucial for emerging Asian countries, in particular Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose scientific infrastructure is less developed, but nonetheless has the potential to become a major player in the development of psychology as well as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) research and training.
DanielsR. J. (2015). A generation at risk: Young investigators and the future of the biomedical workforce. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(2), 313–318.
12.
DiekmanA.BrownE. R.JohnsonA. M.ClarkE. K. (2010). Seeking congruity between goals and roles: A new look at why women opt out of science, technology, engineering, and mathematical careers. Psychological Science, 21, 1051.
13.
EdwardsM. A.RoyS. (2017). Academic research in the 21st century: Maintaining scientific integrity in a climate of perverse incentives and hypercompetition. Environmental Engineering Science, 34(1), 51–61.
14.
EinsteinA. (2014). The world as I see it. New York, NY: CreateSpace.
15.
FanelliD. (2009). How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data. Plos One, 4, e5738.
16.
FangF. C.CasadevallA. (2016). Research funding: The case for a modified lottery. mBio, 7, e00422.
GrossC. (2016). Scientific misconduct. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 693–711.
20.
HesselmannF.GrafV.SchmidtM.ReinhardtM. (2017). The visibility of scientific misconduct: A review of the literature on retracted journal articles. Current Sociology, 65(6), 814–845.
KabasencheW. P. (2014). The ethics of teaching science and ethics: A collaborative proposal. Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, 15(2), 135–138.
27.
LillienfeldS. (2017a). Psychology’s replication crisis and the grant culture: Righting the ship. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 12(4), 660–664.
28.
LillienfeldS. (2017b). Seven costs of the money chase: How academia’s focus on funding influences scientific progress. APS Observer, 30(8), 13–15.
MichalekA. M.HutsonA. D.WicherC. P.TrumpD. L. (2010). The costs and underappreciated consequences of research misconduct: A case study. PLoS Medicine, 7, e1000318.
34.
MillerG. (2006). The Asian future of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Psychology, 4, 107–119.
SternA. M.CasadevallA.SteenR. G.FangF. C. (2014). Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications. eLife, 3, e02956.
51.
SvareB. (2011). Assessing psychology in Thailand. International Psychology Bulletin, 15(2), 21–26.
52.
SvareB. (2014). Telling the truth about intercollegiate sports: Time to expose faculty corruption and the ‘Big Lie’. In SpracklenK. (Ed.), Sport: Probing the boundaries (pp. 116–140). Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
53.
SvareB. (2018). Spreading the discipline of psychology in Thailand: Reflections from a Fulbright scholar. International Psychology Bulletin, 22(2), 11–24.
54.
SvareB. (2020, in press). Why the teaching of psychology internationally is important. International Psychology Bulletin.
