Cheaters beware! Tool sniffs out plagiarism

Investigations launched
So far, Garner’s group has sent out e-mails calling attention to 20 individual cases, notifying  authors and journal editors of the striking resemblances and asking for clarification.

The surprised reactions of editors and initial authors, and the subsequent investigations and retracted papers are likely to be repeated on a much larger scale. In the coming weeks,  Garner’s group will send out automated questionnaires related to another 80 cases in which at least two curators have found reason to continue the process. Thousands more potential duplicates remains to be sorted.

Garner cautioned that the review is meant to initiate a process that should involve everyone with a vested interest. “We’re really trying not to be the judge and jury here,” he said. With the publicly available tool, though, some journal editors and reviewers have become sleuths on their own,  and in at least one case have intercepted a manuscript before its publication and referred it to a university’s ethics committee. “That validates our statement that tools like this can help make the medical database better,” Garner said.

The computer program isn’t perfect, he said, and determined rule-breakers can still escape detection. But as knowledge spreads about the tool, researchers may be less tempted to act unethically. And those who do now have a higher probability of being caught and punished. Under the common federal definition of misconduct for U.S. scientists, plagiarism, fabrication and falsification of data all carry stiff penalties.

Bad behavior detectors
The concept of an online bad behavior detector is nothing new (the popular Web-based Turnitin, developed by University of California at Berkeley researchers, got its start more than 10 years ago). What sets Garner's work apart is its method of picking out specific instances of questionable conduct and estimating the overall prevalence within a massive database, said Melissa Anderson, director of the Post-Secondary Education Research Institute at the University of Minnesota.

In 2005, Anderson and two co-authors published the results of an anonymous survey of more than 3,200 researchers in the U.S., a seminal report that, as she put it, revealed “some rather shocking estimates” of ethical lapses. Among her team’s findings, 4.7 percent of researchers confessed to re-publishing the same data within the past three years while 1.4 percent admitted to outright plagiarism.

Anderson said her group’s results, based on self-reporting by academics, couldn’t be directly compared to Garner’s study. Nevertheless, she praised his approach as a “great idea” aimed at firming up the figures.

Understanding the intent behind those numbers is still a delicate matter. Differing cultural norms could be one contributing factor, Anderson said, especially for researchers from countries where copying is seen as a way of honoring a good idea. Her group’s analysis also suggests that scientists who perceive a tenure review as unfair are more likely to engage in unethical practices. A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science backs that assessment, finding that students with more fatalistic beliefs — ones primed to believe they have less control over their own destinies — are more likely to cheat and lie.

A drain on research
Regardless of motive, Anderson believes the problem must be addressed before it creates an even bigger drain on legitimate research. “People work really hard to get good science published,” she said. “Then those venues are being wasted on research that isn’t new, when that space could have gone to new science. That’s a waste of public dollars.”

Garner’s team is taking a similar angle in a recent expansion of its work: comparing summaries of government-funded grant proposals. If groups are funded multiple times from different agencies, he believes, the new tool could help cut waste and root out unethical practices.  The same watchdog concept could be applied to a slew of publications stashed away within the suite of LexisNexis storehouses or any other accessible database, whether term papers or political speeches.

Ultimately, Garner believes his program has just as much potential to uncover positive connections. Among its newest projects, his team has begun working with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation to establish social networks among scientists conducting related cancer studies. From an initial computer-assisted search through similar-sounding research, the effort aims to promote auspicious pairings, opportunities for fruitful collaborations and a faster overall pace for subsequent research.

Those matched words, Garner hopes, will be the ones that eventually matter most of all.

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