VIOLATIONS ARE BECOMING MORE AND MORE COMPLEX AND SOPHISTICATED
At the conference, Dr. Duong Tu, Purdue University (USA), warned about the current situation of scientific publications being manipulated by a number of organizations and individuals, causing science to lose its original beauty of creating new knowledge, discovering laws in nature and contributing to society, and instead becoming an activity of racing for quantity and measurement. Initially, the number of publications was small, so the evaluation could be done directly with each work. Later, the number of works increased, so the evaluation had to be based on intermediate indicators such as citations, H-index, ranking, etc.
For the first time, the Ministry of Science and Technology coordinated with the Ministry of Education and Training to organize a scientific conference on integrity in research.
Evaluation based on these indicators is easily manipulated for personal gain. From being a tool to evaluate research, it has become a goal when chasing after the number of articles, chasing after citation index, H index... "From the beginning, science has been based on two basic foundations: honesty and trust of those who receive the results. But these are two fragile foundations that are easily abused and manipulated. As a result, dishonest people take advantage of the trust the scientific community has in them, fabricating or doing bad things," Dr. Duong Tu worries.
Dr. Duong Tu also shared his personal experience about the increasingly complex and sophisticated violations of scientific integrity (SCI). Plagiarism, fabricating data, etc. are "classic" forms of violations. With the development of technology, new forms of fraud have emerged, such as citation fraud, or establishing networks and systems of collusion with each other. "They can post anything they want. I call it a mafia network. If we are not aware of the existence of such networks, are not aware of the existence of such sophisticated fraud and scams, we will not be able to fight it or improve it," Dr. Duong Tu warned.
According to Dr. Duong Tu, the harm of violations of scientific ethics is not only a waste of taxpayers' and the state's money (through research funding), but also very harmful to people's lives if those fraudulent research results are used as the basis for policy making. More importantly, it affects public trust in scientists. This is a world problem, not just a problem in Vietnam. It makes people less and less believe in science, people believe in pseudoscience, conspiracy theories and unhealthy things.
Dr. Duong Tu, Purdue University (USA), has spoken out to warn about the current state of scientific publication.
DO N'T LET SCIENTISTS TRADE HONESTY FOR CLOTHES
According to Dr. Duong Tu, in order for scientists to be happy because their research serves science, serves the community, is trusted by the people, and continues to be funded by the state and the community, scientific evaluation must focus on quality instead of quantity. There must be an evaluation policy so that scientists, instead of chasing the number of articles, citation indexes, H-indexes, rankings, etc., return to the nature of science. There must be a policy to ensure that scientists can survive, so that people can rest assured, and not have to trade their honesty and integrity for a living to maintain their daily lives.
Professor Phung Ho Hai, Vietnam Institute of Mathematics, also believes that to solve the problem of LCKH, we cannot just talk about ethics but must talk about the law, and more deeply than the law is the problem of institutions and mechanisms. "I want to emphasize the mechanism. The phenomena of LCKH violations are created by the mechanism. It is not that scientists are naturally depraved. The mechanism creates them. Decades ago, there were no violations of LCKH like we are seeing happening! The main problem is how to innovate the mechanism!", Professor Phung Ho Hai said.
Mr. Hai further analyzed: "Why do scientists violate integrity? The circumstances created it, so now we have to change the circumstances. Like fighting corruption, first of all, we must not need, not want, not dare, and not be corrupt. Now with science, we must create a mechanism so that scientists do not need, do not want, do not dare, and cannot lie. And the root is not need. That means scientists must have enough to eat."
THERE IS A NEED FOR A CHANGE IN THE EVALUATION OF SCIENTISTS
According to Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Van Phuc, in the past 10 years, one of the outstanding results of science, technology and innovation activities has been the sharp increase in the number of scientific publications in prestigious international journals. Along with this increase, besides the positive contributions, there are a number of issues that need attention and resolution, including emerging debates about integrity in scientific research, which is the reason for the two ministries to organize the workshop.
Delegates attending the workshop on integrity in scientific research
The organizers of the workshop hope that through the opinions of scientists, they will be able to identify existing difficulties and limitations, and appropriate, feasible and effective solutions to enhance integrity in scientific research in general and scientific publication in particular, thereby improving the actual quality of scientific and technological activities and education and training.
According to Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Tran Hong Thai, LCKH is starting to become a concern of society. It is time for state management agencies to pay attention, to listen to the opinions of the scientific community and public opinion to have appropriate behavior. Integrity is an "open" concept, so there must be an update and general guidance for implementation. The two ministries will work together to unify views on specific issues.
The advisory bodies of the two ministries need to urgently research and propose document formats and guidelines for universities, research institutes and units to implement. "It is time to urge the inspection of the implementation of regulations, develop and implement regulations on research and teaching integrity at research and training institutions," said Deputy Minister Tran Hong Thai.
Deputy Minister Tran Hong Thai also said that there needs to be changes in the evaluation of scientists, including criteria for evaluating the contributions of research topics to the development of the country's socio-economy, instead of focusing only on international publications. On the other hand, the funding form of the NAFOSTED Fund will need to change so that scientific fields develop evenly, avoid negativity, and try to improve the issue of integrity in scientific research.
The State not only sponsors international publications but also tries to sponsor Vietnamese scientists to participate more in world scientific forums in various fields.
"The two ministries together realized that it was time for state management agencies to step in to deal with the issue of integrity in scientific research and training, and gradually try to create a healthy scientific, technological, educational and teaching environment," said Mr. Thai.
Violating LCKH due to pressure to publish internationally
One of the three main presenters at the workshop was Associate Professor Truong Viet Anh, Head of the Department of Science and Technology, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, on some initial results of the research "On building academic integrity through some surveys at university education institutions" conducted by the Hanoi University of Science and Technology research team.
According to Associate Professor Truong Viet Anh, the initial survey analysis results show that survey participants believe that the most common violation of academic integrity today is including the names of people who did not participate as authors or co-authors of scientific research works.
The next most common violations include plagiarism/self-plagiarism; doing scientific work for others/for hire; using the research work of the whole group for personal purposes without the consent of the research group; fabricating and using fake data in overview studies and research results.
The main cause of violations is the pressure on the number of published works of individual scientists.
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