Is research fraud becoming an issue for engineers?

The Following was originally posted on EE World, R&D World’s sister publication

There’s little question that research-paper fraud is increasing dramatically, but by how much?

I recently saw an article that had me worried at many levels. This Wall Street Journal article [1] (behind a paywall, but you can likely lean on a friend or your local public library, which usually has free online access) discussed how there are so many faked research papers being published now — with different levels of fakery — so much so that one major publisher shut down some of their publications.

The article states that “the biggest hit has come to Wiley,” an old-line, highly respected publisher, “which is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud. In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers that appeared compromised…”

That’s obviously very damning and very scary. Publishers are applying new test schemes to try to assess if the paper is an outright false creation or a modified, edited, or re-worded version of another paper (AI makes it so much easier to both create various fakes as well as to try to catch them [2]). There’s also the enormous, related issue of image fakery, adding to and amplifying the problem.

Of course, there’s nothing new about fraudulent research and papers of various types, but the problem seems to be getting worse. Nor is there any single reason for it. The major reasons are resume enhancement, bragging rights, and ego on one side, and the eternal hunt for getting funding and continuing to get it on the other.

Today, much university-type work is funded by foundation grants, government grants, and similar sources rather than directly by the institution. In contrast to pioneers such as Thomas Edison who self-funded his many projects out-of-pocket mostly via profit from his various inventions and patents, university-based researchers are always looking towards that next grant.

One way to get that additional funding is to show success, or at least substantial progress, on what you are already working on. The key line is “more funding is needed to continue this promising work.” Many universities have entire teams whose primary focus is to write, polish, edit, and extend grant proposals to possible sources.

I’ve always felt that engineering and science, in the broadest sense, had the least potential for fraud, but perhaps I am deceiving myself. My rationale here is simple: If the work is properly documented, then it could be duplicated elsewhere.

In practice, however, other researchers don’t have the time, space, money, or incentive to try to re-create that work. Many of today’s projects require significant investment in those factors. Yes, if push comes to shove, it can be done unambiguously — just Google cold fusion, and you’ll see a project that could not be reproduced.

In contrast, duplicating a social-science paper on the effects of a policy using a group of, say, 100 people is very difficult. Similarly, clinical medical studies on the performance of a new drug are also hard to re-do for obvious reasons.

Sometimes, the issue is not outright fraud but over-selling of the presumed research results. For example, with the intense push for better batteries, it seems like every university is working on improving batteries with respect to basic chemistry, packaging, failure modes, and recharge/discharge performance.

As a consequence, nearly every paper’s subject is positioned as a “breakthrough” or “revolutionary,” no matter how modest the gain it actually is. If all these accumulated acclamations were the case, batteries would already have energy density comparable to hydrocarbons — but they definitely do not. The reality is that it’s a long road from a dramatic advance on the benchtop in the lab to a viable small-scale pilot run and a much longer road to mass production. Is this fraud? Not in the strict sense, but it is misleading and wishful thinking.

For example, one research team claimed their breakthrough would allow for a significant improvement in battery charge time, so an electric vehicle could be charged in just a few minutes [3 and 4]. But much of their claim is speculative extrapolation from their small cells.

Even if their claims are true, what happens thermally and chemically when you scale from a desktop battery to an EV-size pack? How will you source the power for a full-size EV battery pack or handle the thermal issues of delivering the megawatts needed at the charging station and the vehicle? You’d need an adjacent power substation, cables as thick as fire hoses, connectors the size of dinner plates, and an amazing cooling subsystem.

In my view, the eternal quest for grant-based funding is the primary driver of these outright fraud and semi-fraud scenarios. The unintended complement to this situation is that research that does not produce quick advances gets shunted aside.

When reproducible, fact-driven research in disciplines such as electronics, physics, chemistry, and optics starts to cut corners on credibility, the results will not be pretty for anyone. Legitimate individual researchers and their teams are hurt, as well as the image of these professions.