Professors provide ethical-research roadmap to avoid pitfalls of 'publish or perish' mentality

Renowned physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed the Higgs boson, once remarked that he could not get a job in modern academia because he wouldn’t be considered productive enough. After all, it took 48 years for the existence of the Higgs boson to be accepted by the scientific community.

In a recent perspective on ethics in science, three professors addressed those who are just getting started in scientific fields about the pressures that researchers face and the importance of remaining true and ethical regardless of those pressures. William A. Cunningham, a University of Toronto psychology professor, Leah H. Somerville, a psychology professor at Harvard University, and Jay J. Van Bavel, an associate professor of psychology and neural sciences at New York University, collaborated on the piece for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The pressures researchers face to produce results have the potential to lead to short-term thinking without consideration for the long-term consequences, the authors state. 

“Our goal is to help you avoid pitfalls and find an approach that will allow you to succeed without impairing the broader goals of science,” the article explained.

Citing examples such as Stephen Hawking’s greatest scientific discovery coming when he proved himself wrong during a debate about black holes, the authors encouraged scientists to be open to being wrong. 

“When you stumble across an unexpected finding, your first reaction might be to feel defensive," they wrote. "It is possible you made a mistake, and if that’s the case it’s important to figure that out. But it is also possible that it’s a real finding.” 

A fundamental element of science is discovery by disproving the hypothesis, and pride should not defeat discovery, the article stated. The authors also cautioned against the temptation to overstate a finding because it goes against conventional wisdom. Although journals may be eager to publish such a piece, prestige and notoriety should not become the focus of research.

“If you become fixated on making a groundbreaking discovery, it could lead you to overanalyze your data, ignore inconvenient findings or neglect alternative explanations,” the authors wrote. “You’ll mislead readers in the process – and you may even mislead yourself as you try to defend against every attack on your pet explanation for the data.”

Additionally, there is real risk to overstating a result, especially early in a career when having to retract a finding can be devastating to a scientist’s credibility, they noted. When it is time for results to be reviewed, it is better to solicit the feedback of those who are most likely to criticize and find problems, as those are the reviews that will help a researcher refine and improve their paper. 

The authors used an example of a paper Somerville and a doctoral student submitted for review. Although they had to incorporate “seemingly endless” constructive criticism after their first paper was rejected, the resulting paper was strong enough that they submitted it to a higher-impact journal that accepted it.

Research into the impact of papers has found that it is the papers that are initially rejected and then reworked that become the most cited, the authors stated.

There is also benefit – even if it means more work – to making research open-source and transparent, the authors wrote. Those papers that promote wider collaboration in the scientific community through being open-source also tend to be the papers that become most cited.

“Transparency signals to others that you are committed to the scientific process and allows science to move forward faster than ever,” the authors stated.

Overall, the authors encouraged scientists not to become so focused that they forget to step back and consider the role they are playing in the greater community. Looking at the “bigger picture” can be helpful in preventing a researcher from being sucked into the approach of treating academic research as a game, rather than as a meaningful endeavor.