IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/psydev/v32y2020i1p94-121.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Cautionary Tale for Psychology and Higher Education in Asia: Following Western Practices of Incentivising Scholarship May Have Negative Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce B. Svare

Abstract

Cases of scientific fraud and research misconduct in general have escalated in Western higher education over the last 20 years. These practices include forgery, distortion of facts and plagiarism, the outright faking of research results and thriving black markets for positive peer reviews and ghost-written papers. More recently, the same abuses have found their way into Asian higher education with some high profile and widely covered cases in India, South Korea, China and Japan. Reports of misconduct are now reaching alarming proportions in Asia, and the negative consequences for individuals, institutions, governments and society at large are incalculable. The incentives for academic scientists in Asia are approaching and even surpassing those ordinarily seen in the West. Cash payments for publishing articles in high impact journals can double or even triple yearly salaries in some cases. Combining this environment with the simultaneous pressure to obtain oftentimes scarce funding for research has produced a culture of unethical behaviour worldwide. This article assesses three important issues regarding scientific fraud and research misconduct: distorted incentives for research and overreliance upon metrics, damage to the integrity of higher education and public trust and improving research environments so as to deter unethical behaviour. This is especially crucial for emerging Asian countries, in particular Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose scientific infrastructure is less developed, but nonetheless has the potential to become a major player in the development of psychology as well as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) research and training.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce B. Svare, 2020. "A Cautionary Tale for Psychology and Higher Education in Asia: Following Western Practices of Incentivising Scholarship May Have Negative Outcomes," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 32(1), pages 94-121, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:psydev:v:32:y:2020:i:1:p:94-121
    DOI: 10.1177/0971333619900043
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0971333619900043
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0971333619900043?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alison Abbott & David Cyranoski & Nicola Jones & Brendan Maher & Quirin Schiermeier & Richard Van Noorden, 2010. "Metrics: Do metrics matter?," Nature, Nature, vol. 465(7300), pages 860-862, June.
    2. Arthur M Michalek & Alan D Hutson & Camille P Wicher & Donald L Trump, 2010. "The Costs and Underappreciated Consequences of Research Misconduct: A Case Study," Working Papers id:2919, eSocialSciences.
    3. Richard Van Noorden, 2010. "Metrics: A profusion of measures," Nature, Nature, vol. 465(7300), pages 864-866, June.
    4. Daniele Fanelli, 2009. "How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(5), pages 1-11, May.
    5. David Cyranoski, 2018. "China introduces sweeping reforms to crack down on academic misconduct," Nature, Nature, vol. 558(7709), pages 171-171, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kaur, Jasleen & Radicchi, Filippo & Menczer, Filippo, 2013. "Universality of scholarly impact metrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 924-932.
    2. Gilles Grolleau & Naoufel Mzoughi, 2022. "How research institutions can make the best of scandals – once they become unavoidable," Post-Print hal-03908837, HAL.
    3. Qiang Wu & Peng Zhang, 2017. "Some indices violating the basic domination relation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 495-500, October.
    4. Brian H Spitzberg, 2018. "Framing the Game: An Architectonic Analogue for Meta-Theorizing Academic Activities," Studies in Media and Communication, Redfame publishing, vol. 6(1), pages 11-25, June.
    5. Fong, Eric A. & Wilhite, Allen W., 2021. "The Impact of False Investigators on Grant Funding," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(10).
    6. Mohan, Vijay, 2019. "On the use of blockchain-based mechanisms to tackle academic misconduct," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    7. Moustafa, Khaled, 2018. "Don't fall in common science pitfall!," FrenXiv ycjha, Center for Open Science.
    8. Love, Peter E.D. & Ika, Lavagnon A. & Ahiaga-Dagbui, Dominic D., 2019. "On de-bunking ‘fake news’ in a post truth era: Why does the Planning Fallacy explanation for cost overruns fall short?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 397-408.
    9. Jeremy Hall & Ben R. Martin, 2019. "Towards a Taxonomy of Academic Misconduct: The Case of Business School Research," SPRU Working Paper Series 2019-02, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    10. Kartal, Melis & Tremewan, James, 2018. "An offer you can refuse: The effect of transparency with endogenous conflict of interest," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 44-55.
    11. Robert J Warren II & Joshua R King & Charlene Tarsa & Brian Haas & Jeremy Henderson, 2017. "A systematic review of context bias in invasion biology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-12, August.
    12. Jasper Brinkerink, 2023. "When Shooting for the Stars Becomes Aiming for Asterisks: P-Hacking in Family Business Research," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(2), pages 304-343, March.
    13. Frederique Bordignon, 2020. "Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1225-1239, August.
    14. Hensel, Przemysław G., 2019. "Supporting replication research in management journals: Qualitative analysis of editorials published between 1970 and 2015," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 45-57.
    15. Christoph Bartneck & Servaas Kokkelmans, 2011. "Detecting h-index manipulation through self-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 85-98, April.
    16. Bergemann, Dirk & Ottaviani, Marco, 2021. "Information Markets and Nonmarkets," CEPR Discussion Papers 16459, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 38-55, January.
    18. Brian Fabo & Martina Jancokova & Elisabeth Kempf & Lubos Pastor, 2020. "Fifty Shades of QE: Conflicts of Interest in Economic Research," Working and Discussion Papers WP 5/2020, Research Department, National Bank of Slovakia.
    19. Harrison, Mark, 2009. "Forging Success : Soviet Managers and False Accounting, 1943 to 1962," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 909, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    20. Eduardo A. Haddad & Jesus P. Mena-Chalco, Otávio J.G. Sidone, 2016. "Produção Científica e Redes de Colaboração dos Docentes Vinculados aos Programas de Pós-graduação em Economia no Brasil," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2016_10, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:psydev:v:32:y:2020:i:1:p:94-121. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.