Official Definitions of Research Misconduct

Commonly Agreed Upon

• Falsification -- misrepresentation of results
• Fabrication -- experiments never performed
• Plagiarism -- to take the writings or ideas of another and represent them as one's own. (Copyright is a legal notion that does not cover ideas.)

Controversial Category

• ``Other Serious Deviations From Accepted Research Practices'': Included in NSF's and PHS's (but not NAS's or MIT's) definition.