I was once asked, by someone outside of academia, about academic (dis)honesty, and concurred that accusing a researcher of this kind of misconduct is about as serious as you can get. Using data or results without attribution (plagiarism) or worse, outright fabrication of data, are things the scientific community should not (and generally does not) tolerate. Part of the feedback loop keeping things on the straight-and-narrow should be vested self-interest. I can’t imagine researchers wanting to collaborate with one who has plagiarized, and it’s more difficult to do research alone. One who fabricates data is almost certain to be found out, unless it’s in an area of research so obscure that there is no follow-up. (But then that means the research has little value — it’s like counterfeiting a dollar-bill. Why bother?)

I’ve never observed any of this, though I’ve been around long enough to see the type of worker who likes to take credit for others’ work in endeavors outside of research. Fortunately, these cases are peripheral to my own career — I’ve mostly worked with people who were quite insistent on making sure that the credit for work was properly attributed. That’s something that boosts your own credibility, of course, because your audience will believe you when you give an account of your own contribution to the work.

There’s now a study that followed up on some cases on scientific misconduct, and an article summarizing it. Does fraud mean career death?

“People who were found guilty of plagiarism [as opposed to expressly fabricating or falsifying data] get less severe of a punishment, so they were more likely to continue to publish,” Redman noted. Ten of the 28 scientists whose employment information they were able to trace continued to hold academic appointments after the ORI ruling. Originally, 23 out of those 28 had worked in academia.

However, Merz and Redman’s data, as well as interviews they conducted with the seven researchers who agreed to speak with them, indicate that recovering from the misconduct ruling was extremely difficult. Unsurprisingly, the group’s average publication rate was significantly lower after the ruling, dropping from 2.1 to 1.0 publications per year. Twelve of the scientists ceased to publish completely. In interviews with Merz and Redman, researchers described extensive personal and financial hardships due to the ruling.