Doctor of Natural Sciences A suspected that researchers and directors of a research institute were guilty of falsification or disregard for the responsible conduct of research by failing to refer to A’s doctoral dissertation published in 2007. A suspected that the researchers’ independence had been compromised by financial links with the industry.
TENK’s statements 2020:2 and 2020:3 are related to the same issue.
According to TENK, failure to refer to an individual study does not indicate such research misconduct by falsification of observations as described in the RCR guidelines that the criteria of an RCR violation would be met.
According to the RCR guidelines, denigrating the role of other researchers in publications could also be examined as disregard for the responsible conduct of research. However, in order to establish an RCR violation in such a case, the actions of the researcher alleged of a violation should constitute gross negligence and carelessness in various stages of the research.
Based on the material submitted to TENK, there was no reason to conclude that the researchers or management of the research institute had acted in such a way that their behaviour could be interpreted as an RCR violation by gross negligence. The researchers under suspicion had also announced the sources of financing when publishing the results. According to TENK, the independence of the researchers had not been compromised by any provider of funding.