Several widely publicized incidents of academic research misconduct, combined with the politicization of the role of science in public health and policy discourse (e.g., COVID, immunizations) threaten to undermine faith in the integrity of empirical research. Researchers often maintain that peer-review and study replication allow the field to self-police and self-correct; however, stark disparities between official reports of academic research misconduct and self-reports of academic researchers, specifically with regard to data fabrication, belie this argument. Further, systemic imperatives in academic settings often incentivize institutional responses that focus on minimizing reputational harm rather than the impact of fabricated data on the integrity of extant and future research.

几起广为人知的学术研究不端行为事件，加上科学在公共卫生和政策话语（例如 COVID、免疫接种）中的作用的政治化，有可能破坏人们对实证研究完整性的信心。研究人员经常坚持认为，同行评审和研究复制允许该领域进行自我监督和自我纠正；然而，学术研究不端行为的官方报告与学术研究人员的自我报告之间的明显差异，特别是在数据伪造方面，证明了这一论点。此外，学术环境中的系统性要求通常会激励机构做出反应，这些反应侧重于最大限度地减少声誉损害，而不是捏造数据对现有和未来研究完整性的影响。