Sometimes it feels like, fighting a loosing battle!

• • Being an avid researcher, I always push myself to think counterintuitively. In this case, why is research integrity important? What if there was no integrity in research? A few thousands might die because of medicines which should have saved them, 1000s more may die due to building and bridge collapses, millions may starve due to failed harvest cultivating crops which claimed overproduction, maybe we might have more fireworks in the sky when satellites are launched or we might have all been dead and gone.
    
    

    Importance of standards:

    We always give excuses for not being up to the mark. But who sets these marks? Should we actually even compromise perfection? We as a race have understood from our experiences over the centuries that efficiency is as important as perfection. So we set standards, to bring about this balance. We allow error bars and we empathize with experimental and human errors and try to accommodate them, see the significance of the outcome rather than a black and white approach.
    
    

    Rat race and instant gratification:

    “I need to report to my boss by tonight. So, I don't care about the pH being 7.6 instead of 7.5. All he needs is data which we can add in that paper.” This is just the tip of the iceberg, we know too well that the system we are in today which is based on impact factors and publish or perish culture, is the root cause. We have run too far with it as a community to even turn back and introspect. We think it is the norm, we breathe it, we believe it and we live it. We want every single experiment to be a part of a research article which will be published in a high impact factor paper. So what happens, we go a step further.
    
    

    Breaching the boundaries:

    When a meeting is set for 8 am we sometimes tend to think 10 minutes past 8 am is also ok. Our day to day approaches like this, pushes us to overrule the standards assuming time intervals in readings are ok, removing outliers are not bad and may be just decreasing the control value a bit to reach the magical p < 0.05 is acceptable. By doing this, we ignore the gravity of the effect it is going to have on the world.

    
    

    There are more than a few reasons why integrity is important;

    
    

    •   Most of the research is done using the hard earned tax money of the general public.
    •   The researchers are most of the time paid for all the work they perform, unlike the days when
      scientist worked part time at odd hours to support the research they were doing.
    •   More importantly, the basis of any project is to strive for a better human existence, if the
      research we do is not going to accomplish this due to its falseness; ARE WE DOING JUSTICE TO EVEN OUR OWN CONSCIENCE?