Fraud in the lab The high stakes of scientific research

Chevassus-au-Louis is a French investigative journalist with a background in biomedical research. In this volume, he reviews numerous examples of scientific results between the 1970s and the present in which data were invented, massaged, or selected inappropriately. He also points out how failures to follow standard refereeing processes allowed some of this fraudulent research to be published, and he reflects on the challenges posed by the real difficulties involved in replicating experiments. Chevassus-au-Louis includes cases from Europe, North America, and Asia, and draws on journal articles, other scientific reporting, and his own observations. He focuses on the biological and medical sciences, although some of the phenomena described, such as plagiarism and pressures to publish frequently and quickly, are found in the physical sciences and mathematics too. He closes with a call for "slow science," characterized by free exchanges of ideas and information, with evaluations based on qualitative standards. Fraud in the Lab would be a suitable text for methodology, capstone, and ethics courses in a variety of fields, as it provides thought-provoking discussion material about the complexities of practice in science, publishing, business, and academia. The translation is clear, apparently accurate, and accessible. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Amy K. Ackerberg-Hastings, independent scholar