ANDI HORVATH
I'm Doctor Andi Horvath, thanks for joining us. Today we bring you Up Close to research on researchers. We're putting academics and scientists under the microscope and on the psychiatric couch. While scientists serve society well, we are increasingly concerned about misconduct in research results that don't hold up under scrutiny. We're now realising that many research findings aren't in fact reproducible, a key factor in research credibility.
The reasons can range from fraud, to poor understanding of methodology, to simply careless work. So what's driving researchers to undermine their own science? As with people in other professions, scientists have job related stress and occupational burn out, they're under pressure to perform, after all it's a “publish or perish” world.
But does the pressure on scientists help explain compromised research? What else could be going on between the ears of the people whose work can have a real impact on the rest of us? To explore the question of how scientists and other researchers view the pressures they're under, and how their work is affected, we're joined by researcher and psychiatrist, Dr Joeri Tijdink. Joeri has written a number...