Different Kinds of Scientific Fraud Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Different Kinds of Scientific Fraud - Assignment Example One of the serious cases of scientific fraud involves carrying out a research process that does not conform to the expected rigour. For example, if a scientist adopts a quantitative paradigm, he or she faces the compulsion of formulating both a null and alternative hypotheses. The data collected in such a research should help the researcher test the two hypotheses and adopt one of them depending on the statistical correlation identified. However, many researchers adopting the quantitative approach claim to have indulged in a rigorous data collection, analysis and hypothesis testing while in a real sense, they have not. Some of them face the temptation of manipulating data to soot the hypothesis that they think is right. The use of unreliable statistical tools also compromises the quality of data analysis.Scientific fraud may involve the production of a scientific paper aimed at presenting the different steps adopted in the research process. In a real sense, a scientific paper is a th eoretical reconstruction of all the activities undertaken by the researcher. However, many researchers only report aspects of their research that proved successful. They prefer to omit cases of failed experiments because of poor design, erroneous data analysis. This is the reason why many of the research papers published seem to insinuate that the researcher had a carefully arranged proposal and outline and that implementation of the research paradigm adopted was of a very high standard.