Causes of questionable scientific research through medical specialties residents perception

Abstract

Introduction: Data fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are considered serious forms of scientific misconduct. Objective: To identify evidence of misconduct and the most common favorable conditions perceived by residents of the medical specialties of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana. Material and Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive research in which residents of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana were surveyed. A questionnaire on the practice of scientific misconduct was applied in two independent settings (regular class and evaluation). We worked with the scientific misconduct variable and its types, and other variables of a demographic type. A Bayesian association test was performed using version 0.9 of the R Library called the Bayes factor with default standards and a multinomial sampling plan with fixed column totals. Under the null hypothesis it is assumed that columns have the same probabilities in the multinomial distribution. Results: Plagiarism was the most common type of malpractice followed by fabrication of data and falsification of results. The Bayesian association test carried out results in a probability of 0.309 (FB < 1) in favor of the null hypothesis, which suggests independence between the group variables and scientific misconduct. Conclusions: There is evidence that, in addition to plagiarism, other forms of scientific misconduct such as the fabrication and falsification of results may be present in our environment. However, this type of practice is considered unjustified by the majority of the interviewees. Pressure plays an important role as a cause of scientific misconduct and increases the risk when other factors such as dishonesty, ignorance and disinterest are present

Keywords

• plagio
• mala conducta científica
• médicos residentes.