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dc.contributor.authorEckhartt, Greg
dc.contributor.authorRuxton, Graeme Douglas
dc.date.accessioned2023-04-14T09:31:26Z
dc.date.available2023-04-14T09:31:26Z
dc.date.issued2023-04-11
dc.identifier282630331
dc.identifier820e40a1-4401-4172-90d7-baa169371797
dc.identifier.citationEckhartt , G & Ruxton , G D 2023 , ' Investigating and preventing scientific misconduct using Benford’s Law ' , Research Integrity and Peer Review , vol. 8 , 1 . https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-022-00126-wen
dc.identifier.issn2058-8615
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0001-8943-6609/work/133187355
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/27399
dc.description.abstractIntegrity and trust in that integrity are fundamental to academic research. However, procedures for monitoring the trustworthiness of research, and for investigating cases where concern about possible data fraud have been raised are not well established. Here we suggest a practical approach for the investigation of work suspected of fraudulent data manipulation using Benford’s Law. This should be of value to both individual peer-reviewers and academic institutions and journals. In this, we draw inspiration from well-established practices of financial auditing. We provide synthesis of the literature on tests of adherence to Benford’s Law, culminating in advice of a single initial test for digits in each position of numerical strings within a dataset. We also recommend further tests which may prove useful in the event that specific hypotheses regarding the nature of data manipulation can be justified. Importantly, our advice differs from the most common current implementations of tests of Benford’s Law. Furthermore, we apply the approach to previously-published data, highlighting the efficacy of these tests in detecting known irregularities. Finally, we discuss the results of these tests, with reference to their strengths and limitations.
dc.format.extent10
dc.format.extent1234662
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofResearch Integrity and Peer Reviewen
dc.subjectBenford’s Law testsen
dc.subjectAnimal behaviouren
dc.subjectScientific misconducten
dc.subjectPeer reviewen
dc.subjectBenford’s Lawen
dc.subjectRetracted article testingen
dc.subjectQ Science (General)en
dc.subjectDASen
dc.subjectMCCen
dc.subject.lccQ1en
dc.titleInvestigating and preventing scientific misconduct using Benford’s Lawen
dc.typeJournal articleen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. School of Biologyen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Centre for Biological Diversityen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciencesen
dc.identifier.doi10.1186/s41073-022-00126-w
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden


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