Today’s scientific research relies on the principles and practices of scientific integrity to preserve the quality of new papers and ensure the validity of the adoption of their results by practical science. Preservation of scientific integrity depends in many ways on the researchers’ and institutions’ competence and personal and collective objectivity and honesty values (National Academy of Sciences, 2017). Modern healthcare depends on scientific research and funding, including regular government contributions and grants. The abundance of healthcare institutions, the increasing complexity and specificity of new and relevant research topics, and the limited funding possibilities create intense competition among institutions and scientists, resulting in scientific integrity neglect. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need for preserving scientific integrity in research and the repercussions of incomplete research and rushed publications. Today’s challenges for scientific integrity in healthcare require proper evaluation and must be handled on a systemic level.
The Adverse Effects of Hypercompetition in Healthcare Research and Practice
Modern healthcare is a complex system, including research institutions, educational centers, manufacturing facilities, and business organizations involved in constant competition for governmental and private funding. Over the last decades, the pressure on scientists and institutions has increased significantly, challenging their resolve to preserve the scientific integrity of research and practices, including developing performance and effectiveness metrics and education (Edwards & Roy, 2017). The competition for government funding is a significant contributor to this issue, especially in the United States. Decreased federal and state funding, combined with the selectivity of preferred research and practice areas, cause unhealthy competition between government agencies, scientists, educational facilities, and healthcare practitioners (Edwards & Roy, 2017). As a result, over-incentivizing scientists and institutions to rush their research combined with strict rules of scientific integrity has led to a high risk of unethical behavior among academics and scientists.
The implications of broken scientific integrity in research and practice are particularly acute in healthcare due to the seriousness of the adverse effects it may have. Fanelli et al. (2017) suggest that the incentive to publish many articles and research papers often causes scientists to produce rushed results exaggerating their significance to increase the likelihood of receiving funding. Rushed research results are a direct consequence of flawed governmental policies emphasizing the number of publications over their relevance and quality in funding distribution. This practice leads to a similar quality-to-quantity shift among scientists and academics, blurring the severity of flawed research’s effects on healthcare in general. Overindulging the most productive research and practice areas and cutting funding on the others strengthens this paradigm, corrupting the healthcare providers and academics and endangering public health.
Scientific Integrity in the COVID-19 Research
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has introduced many challenges to the healthcare system, primarily the time constraints for relevant pharmaceutical research, vaccine development, clinical trials, and manufacturing. The highly critical nature of the problem required changing the regular testing and production procedures to manage the high demand worldwide, inevitably influencing the researchers’ attitude towards scientific integrity. The negative effects of this approach have been noticed in subsequent papers’ withdrawal from scientific journals and public controversies involving certain medicines and vaccines.
A notable example of a rushed preprint’s long-lasting negative consequences is the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin which was promoted as a possible medicine for COVID-19. However, the subsequently discovered major flaws in data have illustrated the dangers of poorly controlled drug efficacy research for medicine development and the public image of other treatment methods (Reardon S., 2021). Later discussions have indicated that the published results were flawed mainly due to statistical biases in trial procedures caused by small sample sizes, the rushed nature of the work, and subsequent poor control (Reardon S., 2021). The lack of funding and support has also influenced the quality of the paper, highlighting the issue of selective funding even for high-priority research areas. The public trust in healthcare academics and drug manufacturers has been damaged irreversibly, resulting in additional complications for the healthcare system (Trogen et al., 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the inherent importance of following the principles of scientific integrity and ethical research principles for healthcare institutions and scientists, even in critical conditions.
Preserving the Scientific Integrity in Modern Healthcare
New academic and scientific research approaches have presented tools for ensuring objectivity in research papers in today’s challenging conditions. Moher et al. (2020) suggest focusing on the extent to which the researched topics are developed rather than on the number of publications by an author and incentivizing complete data reports to prevent cherry-picking. Promoting research openness, embracing the diversity of methods and tools, and focusing on peer review quality are systemic changes that require little effort yet can help improve the scientific integrity of new research significantly (Moher et al., 2020). Developing a new paradigm is essential to ensure the high quality and trustworthiness of the scientific research results.
Conclusions
Prioritizing funding and perceivable performance over the actual effectiveness and validity of research jeopardizes the healthcare system on all levels. The competition for funding leads to the researchers’ temptation to break the scientific integrity of their works to present the results that would be most likely to ensure good publicity, reputation, and subsequent monetary support. Practical healthcare is similarly subject to the possibilities of broken scientific integrity as evidenced by the controversies of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing the issue on the systemic level by changing the paper value assessment paradigm is essential to ensure the continuing preserving of scientific integrity in healthcare research.
References
Edwards, M. A., & Roy, S. (2017). Academic research in the 21st century: Maintaining scientific integrity in a climate of perverse incentives and hypercompetition. Environmental Engineering Science, 34(1), 51–61. Web.
Fanelli, D., Costas, R., & Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2017). Meta-assessment of bias in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(14), 3714–3719. Web.
Moher, D., Bouter, L., Kleinert, S., Glasziou, P., Sham, M. H., Barbour, V., Coriat, A.-M., Foeger, N., & Dirnagl, U. (2020). The Hong Kong Principles for assessing researchers: Fostering research integrity. PLOS Biology, 18(7). Web.
National Academy of Sciences (2017). Fostering integrity in research. The National Academies Press. Web.
Reardon, S. (2021). Flawed preprint highlights challenges of COVID drug studies. Nature, 596, 173–174. Web.
Trogen, B., Oshinsky, D., & Caplan, A. (2020). Adverse Consequences of Rushing a SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine. JAMA, 323(24), 2460–2461. Web.