Rethinking success, integrity, and culture in research (Part 2) — A multi-actor qualitative study on problems of science

Abstract

Background: Research misconduct and questionable research practices have been the subject of increasing attention in the past few years. But despite the rich body of research available, few empirical works provide the perspectives of non-researcher stakeholders. Methods: To capture some of the forgotten voices, we conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science. We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting. Results: Given the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series with the current paper focusing on the problems that affect the quality and integrity of science. We first discovered that perspectives on misconduct, including the core reasons for condemning misconduct, differed between individuals and actor groups. Beyond misconduct, interviewees also identified numerous problems which affect the integrity of research. Issues related to personalities and attitudes, lack of knowledge of good practices, and research climate were mentioned. Elements that were described as essential for success (in the associate paper) were often thought to accentuate the problems of research climates by disrupting research cultures and research environments. Even though everyone agreed that current research climates need to be addressed, no one felt responsible nor capable of initiating change. Instead, respondents revealed a circle of blame and mistrust between actor groups. Conclusions: Our findings resonate with recent debates, and extrapolate a few action points which might help advance the discussion. First, we must tackle how research is assessed. Second, approaches to promote better science should be revisited: not only should they directly address the impact of climates on research practices, but they should also redefine their objective to empower and support researchers rather than to capitalize on their compliance. Finally, inter-actor dialogues and shared decision making are crucial to building joint objectives for change.