National Scientific Misconduct Policies in Argentina: Two Definitions of Research Misconduct

ABSTRACT

In “An International Study of Research Misconduct Policies”, Resnik et al. count Argentina in the list of countries without national research misconduct policies. In this paper, we clarify that Argentina has national policies of research misconduct and present the research misconduct definitions of two official science organisms: the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the Ethics Committee of the Argentine Ministry of Science (MINCyT).

KEYWORDS:

• Misconduct in research
• research ethics
• research misconduct policies
• ethics and public policy
• research integrity
• research in developing countries

Acknowledgment

We are extremely grateful to Florencia Luna for mentioning the existence of the resolution of CONICET to us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) was created by Decree Law No. 1291 of February 5, 1958, responding to the socially widespread perception of the need to structure an academic body that promotes scientific and technological research in the country. Instituted as an autarchic organism under the dependency of the Presidency of the Nation, it was then endowed with a wide range of instruments that were considered adequate to raise the level of science and technology in Argentina at the middle of the century and that still constitute the axis of its actions: the Careers of the Scientific and Technological Researcher and the Personnel of Support to the Investigation, the granting of scholarships for doctoral and postdoctoral studies, the financing of projects and of executing units of investigation, and the establishment of bonds with international organisms governmental and non-governmental with similar characteristics (CONICET 2018).

2. “Es conducta inapropiada (y en algunos casos, delito) la fabricación de resultados, su falsificación (o alteración) y el plagio” (CE 2006, 3–4). La aclaración entre llaves es añadida por nosotros.

3. “Rechazar todas las formas de fraude científico tales como la fabricación, esto es el registro o informe de datos o resultados fraguados; la falsificación, a saber la manipulación de material, equipos o procesos, la presentación selectiva, modificación, cambio u omisión de datos, imágenes o resultados de investigación; y el plagio, es decir la apropiación, sin otorgar el crédito debido, de ideas, procesos, resultados o expresiones de otra persona, incluyendo aquellas a las que se tuvo acceso en la evaluación de un proyecto de investigación o de un trabajo inédito” (National Commission of Ethics in Science and Technology (CECTE) 2013).

4. The narrow definition of misconduct given by the NASEM report (2017) is “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them. Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record. Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion".

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UBACyT research project (Principle of Autonomy, Popular Sovereignty, and Theory of Democracy) from the University of Buenos Aires [grant number 20020150100193BA] and BioThera-Roland Mertelsmann Foundation (BioThera Institute for the Philosophy of Translational Medicine) [grant number P254].