Professional Misconduct

Scientific and Professional Misconduct

Overview of Scientific and Professional Misconduct in relation to cyber crime: [1]Since the Internet was transformed into the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s making the Net much easier and more popular to use, scientific and professional misconduct has occurred with greater frequency. Among the notorious private sector cases are those involving crimes committed by senior managers and executives of large businesses like Enron and alsoWorldCom. Both of these cases involved investigations by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission into securities fraud (i.e., manipulation of company stock market prices). The crimes were determined to have occurred over long periods of time, on a grand scale, involving billions of dollars and resulting in thousands of people losing their investments in these companies. Fines and prison sentences were imposed on several senior individuals in these companies, who exemplified ways in which lack of professional ethics, cyber abuse, and cybercrime often involve using computer and other information systems including the Internet to manipulate accounting data in order to carry out finance-related crimes.

Resources

Notes and References

1. By Samuel C. McQuade, III

See Also

• Types of Cybercrime
• Cybercriminal

Further Reading

Chang, K. (2002, October 15). On scientific fakery and the systems to catch it. New York Times, F1; Kintisch, E. (2005). Scientific Misconduct: Researcher Faces Prison for Fraud in NIH Grant Applications and Papers. Science, 307(5717), 1851; Kintisch, E. (2006). Poehlman Sentenced to 1 Year of Prison. Science magazine Web site: https://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/ 628/1; McQuade, S.C. (2006). Scientific misconduct. In Understanding and Managing Cybercrime (pp. 92–93). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.; Moore, J.W. (2002). Scientific misconduct. Journal of Chemical Education, 79(12), 1391; U.S. Office of Research Integrity Web site: https://ori.dhhs.gov/education/, and specifically ”2005 Press Release—Dr. Eric T. Poehlman,” viewable at https://ori.dhhs.gov/misconduct/ cases/press_release_poehlman.shtml; Weiss, R. (2005). Web sites of SecuritiesFraud- FYI, specifically (internet link) securitiesfraudfyi.com/enron_fraud.html and https:// (internet link) securitiesfraudfyi.com/worldcom_fraud.html.