title: Rethinking the meaning of being a scientist--the role of scientific integrity boards and some thoughts about scientific culture.
abstract: Biomedicine is a fast moving and often challenging research field. To this extent, it seems that preserving one's integrity is becoming more and more complex and occasionally stressful for individual researchers. Highly competitive funding and publication, the commercialization of biomedicine in general, the media hype about some scientific fields, the politicization of research and higher education, and, last but not least, the increasing specialization necessary to deal with increasingly sophisticated experimental systems and technologies are aspects of this complexity. While guidelines and overseeing control boards are important regulatory instruments, which also serve to enhance awareness of scientific integrity and to increase transparency, are not sufficient to maintain and further develop a positive academic climate that motivates the community to adhere to high and consistent professional ethics. Here, scientific misconduct and misbehaviour will be illustrated by referring to well-documented cases and to the need for improving scientific culture, which will be discussed in depth.
authors.affiliation: Division of Biological Chemistry, Biocentre, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Werner-Felmayer
mesh_terms: D003469:Culture; D028744:Ethics Committees, Research; D006801:Humans; D012586:Science; D015871:Scientific Misconduct