ss of either the frequency or character of academic dishonesty, "fraud by misrepresentation of product, whether through plagiarism or the fabrication or falsification of research data, . . . rarely merits a sanction more severe than public humiliation" (Pallone & Hennessy, 1994, p. 12). Unethical research and professional conduct occurs throughout all elements of universities and colleges--"in all fields, from civil engineering to sociology" (LaFollette, 1994, pp. 6-10).
In 1994, the Office of Research Integrity of the United States Public Health Service "found Thereza Imanishi-Kari of Tufts University guilty of 19 charges of scientific misconduct. Imanishi-Kari conducted the research, on the regulation of immunity, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She published it in 1986 with Nobel laureate David Baltimore, who was not accused" (Lipkin, 1994, p. 393). The investigation documented findings that "the false data were not chance errors but conscious ones 'aimed at a particular result.' Without such fraud, the 'experiments would not have been regarded as significant'--thus not warranting publication or follow-up funding" (p. 393).
In April 1992, "a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences issued its report on misconduct in science . . .," and recommended among other things a definition for academic and researcher misconduct (Buzzelli, 1993, pp. 584-587). The panel recommended limiting the definition of academic and research misconduct to "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism" (p. 584). Many observers, however, feel that the proposed definition is too narrow.
At the collegiate level, Kibler (1994, pp. 92-101) reported the results of a study of 191 colleges and universities indicating the existence of high levels of variation in responding to academic misconduct. The study found further that only approximately one-fourth of the colleges and universities had honor codes for student behavior. A sec...