The Road to Fraud...

In doing research for our group project I found this nice article on "The Road to Fraud" from 2011 on Nature.com. The central point the author makes is that "To understand fraud, we should think about how it begins and escalates, not how it ends. By the time such fraud is exposed, bad choices that would usually lead to only minor transgressions have escalated into outright career-killing behavior." I think this is important, and perhaps the answer I was looking for in regards to the question of avoiding the "slippery slope" or "trap." It would be much more productive to be actively checking the ethics of one's research along the way and rectify any problems as opposed to looking back and simply trying to apologize for bad science after the damage is already done. Another important point she makes is 

But a heavy focus on fraudsters may also conveniently divert our attention from the fraudster within us all. Who cannot find places where they took a first step, or perhaps several steps, down one slippery slope or another? The road to fraud probably starts out with a step taken because of some egotistical fear or anxiety — fear of losing someone's respect, for example, or of letting others down, the fear of being seen as a loser, of being a failure, or of not getting the job, the grant or the award that one covets. 

In many ways, I think this statement goes back to the discussion we had in class about what to do with smaller more "insignificant" studies as I think we all agreed that the pressure to publish big, never-before-seen discoveries often leads to fraud. Thus it's important to remember that scientists are not infallible and genuine mistakes are made, and should be identified as such and corrected before they are let slide to the point of full-blown fraud due to fear of shame or ridicule from the scientific community.