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Questions tagged [whistleblowing]

Reporting a perceived violation of ethical academic conduct, such as grant fraud, falsification of research results, or intellectual property theft.

0 votes
1 answer
167 views

Courses arming students to become whistle blowers in their future career if needed?

QUESTION: Are there any universities currently offering courses arming students to become whistle blowers in their future careers (or even while they are still a student at the university), if needed? ...
J..y B..y's user avatar
  • 2,758
17 votes
5 answers
7k views

Expressing concerns about an individual starting in a faculty position

This is a question that does not quite fit the bill on any particular SE forum but Academia SE comes the closest in my opinion. I will use non-binary they/them pronouns to retain some amount of ...
user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
385 views

What to do when I suspect Research Integrity Office of covering up malpractice

Two years ago I read a paper that I thought had implausibly good results. The data were archived online so I examined them: they were clearly fake. The first author replaced them with other data which ...
44tjr's user avatar
  • 71
4 votes
1 answer
425 views

Where can I find examples of research misconduct reports?

I am writing a report documenting evidence for research misconduct. The report is to be submitted to the ethics board of a university. Are there publicly available examples of such reports? Not the ...
zamazalotta's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
938 views

Unaddressed ethical violation I know about but have no connection to: Do I report it?

I've been made aware of a situation that blatantly violates the honor code at my institution (also every institution). However it does not involve my lab, and the folks in the relevant lab are not ...
kindredChords's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
1k views

Can one blow the whistle on a professor who excludes students on the basis of their personal life?

This post is an attempt to reformulate this misunderstood question. I (and others) did add clarifying information, taken from the OP's comments, to the question, but I believe the whole Q&A&...
aparente001's user avatar
-2 votes
1 answer
317 views

Would you go public with corruption? [closed]

What if there is a hypothetical situation where someone witnessed an enormous amount of corruption in their department/institution; let us say that it is not simply a whiny graduate student, but a ...
user62113's user avatar
  • 1,261
16 votes
1 answer
1k views

Should I breach peer-review confidentiality if I suspect misconduct and the editor is not willing to pursue it?

I was a peer reviewer for a paper that I did not find credible. The data were archived after the paper was published and show many curious or impossible (non-integer counts for example) patterns. I ...
Richard Telford's user avatar
61 votes
2 answers
9k views

Researchers had a paper retracted due to plagiarism and no one at their university is aware of it

A year ago a professor at my department and her grad student had plagiarized a journal paper and published it. The paper was retracted, and the journal published a clear notice that it was due to ...
user53555's user avatar
  • 483
25 votes
4 answers
3k views

What to do when some students pay someone to solve their exams projects and thesis?

There are some students on my masters program in mathematics who don't even know the basics of mathematics like an example of a continuous function or similar. They pay someone else to solve the ...
user44099's user avatar
  • 251
40 votes
5 answers
7k views

I believe my department is failing to enforce standards in doctoral examinations. How to proceed?

I have witnessed multiple doctoral examinations at my (top-10 rated) university in which the student did not, in my opinion, demonstrate the required level of knowledge and understanding under ...
G. L. 's user avatar
  • 2,082
15 votes
3 answers
4k views

Should I report cheating to my professor? If so, how?

My professor reuses old tests. I have no idea why she told us this, but she did. In class today I noticed someone reviewing last years test, with the answers circled, on their computer in google drive,...
Emily's user avatar
  • 151
166 votes
8 answers
36k views

Grant fraud, should I bust my PhD advisor?

tl;dr: Should I report this large grant fraud, and what consequences could it have for me? For obvious reasons, I will try to maintain some anonymity here. So I defended my thesis. Which was funded ...
ranting PhD student's user avatar
150 votes
6 answers
26k views

My professor is rigging data and plagiarizing. What can I do?

I am a graduate student. My department head is manipulating data in his research papers and skillfully alters plagiarized text to avoid detection. I found this out while working with him on a journal ...
atree's user avatar
  • 1,373
91 votes
8 answers
18k views

Should I report an accepted PhD thesis in which the literature review is copied verbatim from sources?

While writing the literature review for my doctoral dissertation, I picked up a few recent dissertations on similar topics from the library to get some pointers on references and style. As I was ...
IndyJ's user avatar
  • 921