Fostering Integrity in Science: Overview of the Report and the Global Context

Sunday, February 14, 2016: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
Marriott Balcony A (Marriott Wardman Park)
Robert M. Nerem, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Fostering Integrity of Science

The research environment has been transformed over the past several decades by technological advances, globalization, growing interdisciplinarity, more intense competitive pressure, and other trends. In this changing environment, the task of fostering integrity in science has become more complex and in some ways more challenging for researchers, research institutions, research sponsors, journals, and scientific societies—the primary stakeholders in the research enterprise. Specific issues such as ensuring the availability of data and code to aid in the replication of results, defining authorship standards, and addressing research misconduct and other breaches of integrity require ongoing work. Several specific high profile cases from recent years illustrate the challenge of fostering integrity and the damage that can result from not doing so effectively.