In October 2020, a paper co-authored by a team of researchers at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru was found to have s...
In October 2020, a paper co-authored by a team of researchers at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru was found to have some concerning data soon after its publication. The committee constituted by the parent institute found some evidence of malpractice. A series of inquiries revealed that the first two authors of the paper had altered some crucial data in the paper.
These findings finally led to the retraction of the paper. Since there were some concerns raised about the National Centre for Biological Sciences inquiry, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Academic Ethics Committee carried out further investigation and arrived at its conclusions recently.
Even though the case is considered to be resolved from the institutional perspective, the incident has raised several questions about the scientific practice that require further deliberation. One of these is the ethical aspects pertaining to the collaborative practice of scientific research.
Multiple scientists and science institutions coming together are indeed complex situations, and as anthropologists and philosophers of science have shown, the processes and pathways of knowledge production involved here are immensely intricate. Carrying out ethical evaluations and arriving at prescriptive suggestions for these is a difficult task, but not attempting that is not an option.
According to a recent study, around 94% of the retracted papers (from Web of...
