In this article, the questions why scientific misconduct has become a subject of criminological research and how scientific misconduct relates to a production-oriented academic culture are examined. It is argued that the current academic career path produces an anomic academic culture. The authors further examine the slippery notion of the term ‘scientific misconduct’ and conclude that questions about the prevalence or increase of scientific misconduct are hardly answerable. They also point at a number of undesirable side-effects of the emerging culture of distrust and control in academia, amongst which socially disengaged, highly predictable and little innovative research. They end with a plea to recapture a truly academic culture.

The phenomenon of scientific fraud has to be studied within the context of neoliberal meritocracy. In this organisational system, the position of the individual within a group (society, university, etc.) is determined by his or her merits in terms of (economic) productivity. Although this sounds fair, neoliberal meritocracy leads to social inequality, unlimited competition between individuals, egoism, priority of quantity over quality, and the irrelevance of ethics. Within the world of scientific research, neoliberal meritocracy leads to sloppy or even fraudulent science, because it incites researchers to prioritize publication criteria before qualitative research.

Scientific misconduct takes place at the heart of higher education organizations. Organizational culture (meso level) shapes scholars’ behaviors and perceptions (micro level) about what should be problematized while conducting research and teaching. In this paper it is argued that there are organizational mechanisms at place by which organizational goals (funding) and professional goals (recognition) become indistinguishable. The mechanisms are: pressure, loose social control, scarce resources and lack of alternatives. Scholars may strategically react to these mechanisms by accepting, fitting in, resisting or giving up. It is at the heart of these mechanisms and strategies that problematic behaviors may emerge.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in scientific malpractice. In the Netherlands, for example, several major cases of plagiarism, fabrication of data and falsification of findings have come to light. The scandal surrounding the Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel, who simply made up the results of empirical research, prompted worldwide attention. As a result of these scandals, universities have, in the past few years, increased their efforts to better ensure the integrity of scientific research. In this process it is sometimes overlooked that scientific integrity is not a clear-cut concept. By examining three ethical issues relevant to criminological research, this article aims to illustrate that the assessment of integrity is a complicated matter. The first dilemma relates to maintaining confidentiality: how to ensure that the privacy of respondents is protected and the research will not harm their interests? The second dilemma has to do with the degree of openness and transparency required from the viewpoint of scientific accountability. How transparent can one be when it comes to conducting scientific research based on secret information and closed sources that are only accessible to the researchers? Finally, the third dilemma concerns the independent position of criminological research. What are the possibilities and limitations of free and independent research in the field of criminology?

In this article the authors focus upon the measures taken as a reaction against scientific fraud against the background of the contemporary science policy that turns the practice of science into a knowledge economy. In the light of the availability but obvious underuse of reactive legal means, they question the recourse to proactive ethical control and regulation of the scientific activities. They contend that such science policy is not so much the expression of a reaction against exceptional cases of scientific fraud, than of an endeavour to discipline and control scientist to the constraints of the knowledge economy. For the authors, however, the latter is the problem to be solved: another science policy is needed.

The Dutch sociologist and lawyer Kees Schuyt worked as scientific researcher and professor of sociology for the University of Leiden and University of Amsterdam. He has written about forty books and many articles about the welfare state, the philosophy of social science and the sociology of law. Between 2006 and 2014 he was chairman of The Netherlands Board on Research Integrity (LOWI). Recently he wrote the book Between fault and fraud. Integrity and dishonest behavior in scientific research. In this interview, Schuyt talks about the role of scientific integrity in his own career and specifically elaborates on dishonest behavior and scientific competition.

In this article I focus on the academic environment in which social psychologist Diederik Stapel worked and developed his career as a con academic. He published over 50 articles with fabricated data in top tier journals. This article is based on interviews with Stapel himself and document analysis. Especially, I pay attention to his socialization as an academic in his years at the University of Amsterdam, where he did his PhD (1986-2000). In my description of how social psychology developed in the nineties in Amsterdam it becomes clear that there was a strong emphasis on competition and publishing articles in top tier journals. Stapel conformed to this culture of competition and published almost as much as the two leading full professors of his department during the period 1995-2000. In the early nineties Stapel discovered that the use of questionable research procedures (QRPs) was common in social psychology. He realized that without using these procedures it was hardly possible to get good results and publish frequently in top tier journals. Though Stapel resented this partly and was disenchanted by this experience, he did integrate QRPs in his daily academic practice. He actually raised the issue of QRPs in a lecture in Oxford when he received the Jos Jaspars Early Career Award of the EAESP, but there was hardly any substantive response to his presentation. The academic culture in which Stapel developed his career can be described as ‘indifferent tolerant’. Though Stapel does refer to the circumstances which influenced his academic fraud, he does state that he himself is responsible for his massive scientific misconduct.

In this opinion piece the authors reflect upon the way in which applied research for law enforcement and safety management is valued within the prevailing academic culture. By drawing from the scholarship on public criminology, the authors introduce the democratic underlabourer as an important yet often undervalued and underrepresented figure capable to bridge potential gaps between academia and the practical field of law enforcement and safety management. By getting organized in the form of a guild, democratic underlabourers would increase their clout and visbility.