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. 2022 Dec 18;23(1):137.
doi: 10.1186/s12910-022-00876-8.

Effect of medical researchers' creative performance on scientific misconduct: a moral psychology perspective

Na Zhang  1 , Mingxuan Guo  2 , Chunhua Jin  2 , Zhen Xu  3
Affiliations

Effect of medical researchers' creative performance on scientific misconduct: a moral psychology perspective

Na Zhang et al. BMC Med Ethics. .

Abstract

Background: In recent years, some researchers have engaged in scientific misconduct such as fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism to achieve higher research performance. Considering their detrimental effects on individuals' health status (e.g., patients, etc.) and extensive financial costs levied upon healthcare systems, such wrongdoings have even more salience in medical sciences. However, there has been little discussion on the possible influence of medical researchers' existing creative performance on scientific misconduct, and the moral psychological mechanisms underlying those effects are still poorly understood.

Methods: We build a moderated mediation model to test how medical researchers' creative performance affects their scientific misconduct and explore the role of moral licensing and moral identity in this process. Based on situational experiments and projection techniques, 287 medical researchers in China participated in a survey.

Results: Medical researchers' creative performance positively relates to scientific misconduct, and moral licensing plays a mediating role in the relationship between them. In addition, moral identity has a negative moderating effect on the mediating effect of moral licensing on creative performance and scientific misconduct.

Conclusion: Moral licensing plays a fully mediating role in the relationship between creative performance and scientific misconduct. And moral identity negatively moderates the indirect effect of creative performance on scientific misconduct through moral licensing. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for the prevention of medical researchers' scientific misconduct.

Keywords: Creative performance; Moral identity; Moral licensing; Scientific misconduct.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The conceptual model
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Creative performance × Moral identity interaction for moral licensing
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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