Many reports are in the news at regular intervals informing about the fudging of data, graphs, and results by well known authors. Enquiries are held and authors are forced to retract their work and the journals which published them, announce the retraction of such papers. There are certain areas where this happens more frequently, because it is easier to fudge the data in these fields. Materials, Nano-science, Bio-sciences are some of he most common areas. Experimental works in these areas involve preparation of materials and samples, which are not easy to preserve. In fact, I have serious doubt about a large number of such papers which come out of 100s of smaller labs where the conditions of the labs are not so good and the students preparing the samples are not so careful and not well trained. The issue may also arise in situations where international mega collaborations are going on and 100s of authors are involved, most of them nearly clueless about what the collaboration is about. Although the management of such collaborations are in the hands of senior scientists, most often these experiments are difficult to repeat and verify. One then relies on the capabilities of established authors who are known to maintain a high level of integrity. The collaborations in high-energy physics are of this nature. With the complexity in science endeavours rising everyday, and getting complicated by advent of AI and machine learning approaches, the nature of research is changing very fast. The whole scene of scientific research is getting muddled with the role of creativity and curiosity driven discoveries being taken over by computers.
