Making misconduct make sense: Justifications of scientific wrongdoing and their consequences

There are numerous documented cases showing scientific misconduct in academia. Reasons are manifold; however, we argue that a common denominator of such deviance is the way scientists justify, trivialize, and excuse their misbehavior, i.e., the way they neutralize it. To understand how academics think about and justify misconduct, we develop a novel set of neutralization techniques tailored to the field of scientific misconduct. We draw on a large body of research in criminology on other areas where neutralizations have been investigated. This study is the first to apply them in the context of violations against the scientific code and investigate whether those who neutralize are more likely to commit scientific misconduct. We draw upon a newly collected data set based on a large-scale survey of scientists in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (Zurich Survey of Aca- demics, ZSoA) that was explicitly designed to capture forms of scientific misconduct. Consistent with our hypotheses, our results reveal a positive correlation between agreeing with neutralization techniques and engaging in scientific misconduct, with denial of responsibility, denial of victims, condemnation of condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties showing significant associations. Ad- ditionally, demographic and work condition influences indicate that male and non-tenured scientists tend to agree more with neutralization statements, compared to female and more senior researchers. We examine in detail the rationalization techniques employed by scientists to justify instances of misconduct, offering insights into the psychological and situational factors that contribute to such behavior. Furthermore, proactive intervention strategies are proposed to disrupt the learning process of these rationalizations, emphasizing the importance of promoting ethical decision-making and ac- countability within scientific institutions. Our study thus provides insights into the way academics reconcile themselves with their wrongdoings, which has implications for potential preventive mea- sures.