Thesis Forgery, Plagiarism, Theft... Widespread Research Misconduct in Universities Nationwide [Reading Science]

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[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] Research misconduct such as data falsification or manipulation, plagiarism, duplicate publication, and misappropriation is widespread across universities nationwide.

According to the Korea Research Foundation on the 20th, the Korea Council for University Education conducted an investigation from February 26 to March 12 last year on research misconduct judgments and disciplinary cases at about 400 domestic universities, reporting 83 cases at 53 universities.

A professor A, a full-time faculty member in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, is a representative case. Professor A used experimental results from a whistleblower instead of his own in two papers, and it was confirmed that falsified images completely different from the experimental results were included, leading to his dismissal. Notably, Professor A also registered one of these papers as a research achievement for a national research and development project and received research funding.

In the fields of agriculture, fisheries, and marine science, it was revealed that a paper submitted to an international academic journal had been manipulated. According to the investigation by the ethics committee of the relevant university, which received a report, the first author, graduate student B, copied data results into image files and manipulated the data by methods such as horizontal and vertical inversion. However, no one was held accountable. The investigation concluded that graduate student B manipulated the data while conducting a "solo experiment," but after graduation and departure abroad, he faced no disciplinary action, and co-authors and the supervising professor (corresponding author) received either no punishment or only warnings and requests for paper withdrawal.

Associate Professor C in the social sciences was found guilty of research misconduct including plagiarism, improper authorship attribution, and improper duplicate publication in a total of three papers. It was also revealed that he repeatedly and coercively demanded money from graduate master's students using grades and graduation exam scores as leverage. Associate Professor C was dismissed for these charges but had the dismissal reduced to termination, allowing him to receive severance pay, by the Faculty Appeal Committee.

Professor D in the arts and physical education was caught plagiarizing research reports prepared by his university’s project team multiple times as his own individual academic papers. He had no actual participation or contribution to the reports. Professor D was penalized with a salary reduction for plagiarism, falsification, and improper authorship attribution.

These survey results only compile cases voluntarily submitted by universities, so the actual situation may be much worse. A university official pointed out, "Research misconduct has been continuously increasing recently, so the statute of limitations for disciplinary action has been extended from the previous 3 years to 10 years."