Tales of research misconduct: A lacanian diagnostics of integrity challenges in science novels

Abstract

Research misconduct (fabricating, falsifying or plagiarising research, also known as FFP), has become an object of concern, not only for scientists and scholars, but also for managers, funders and publishers of research (Fanelli 2009; European Science Foundation 2010; Drenth 2010; Horbach and Halffman 2016). FFP and other “questionable research practices” (QRP) are discussed in various types of discourse, such as reports, guidelines and codes of conduct, but also in a plethora of scholarly publications, ranging from empirical studies (often from a sociology of science or scientometrics perspective) via normative and/or conceptual analyses (often from a science ethics or philosophy of science perspective) up to editorials. This monograph proposes to study research misconduct from a somewhat different, oblique perspective, namely by analysing research misconduct novels, i.e. novels about contemporary research practices, focussing on FFP, but against the backdrop of a more extended research integrity landscape. Such novels, I will argue, help us to understand, but also to open-up and broaden the issues involved. They often entail a multidimensional approach, focussing on individual experiences, but sensitive to the wider systemic context, allowing us to study research misconduct from multiple viewpoints and to see the current wave of scientific misconduct deliberations as symptomatic for fundamental transformations in the ways in which knowledge is currently produced and valued. As Lex Bouter (former Rector and now professor of methodology and integrity at the Free University of Amsterdam) phrases it, “Scientists are exposed to temptations and … it would make a wonderful theme for an exciting movie or a compelling book. The novel is perhaps the best form for investigating the essence of what scientists do, and why they do it” (Bouter 2015, p. 148).