Fraud: Comparison among different fraudsters and their techniques

Abstract

What is it about academic culture that makes it so conducive to committing fraud? This article will attempt to provide some insights into current academic culture and the particular characteristics of that culture that tempt those who function within it to commit fraud. Three prominent cases of fraud will be compared and contrasted with regard to their methods, how they were exposed, and why they started to commit fraud in the first place. First, the case of the physicist Jan Henrik Schön will be considered. Second, the recent case of the social psychologist Diederik Stapel will be examined. Third, the case of Yoshitaka Fuji, who published 172 articles based on research he never did, will be discussed. The goal of this article is to increase awareness of the propensity to fraud in current academic culture.