Social Epistemology of Research Misconducts and Peer Review

Abstract

　Research misconducts （such as fabrication, falsification and plagiarism） threat the credibility of research papers, and we do not have effective means to guard against misconducts. Can the peer review system, or some revision of it, be used to improve the situation by detecting misconducts? This paper tries to answer the question from the viewpoint of social epistemology. There are several studies in social epistemology which deal with peer review and research misconduct. Applying these viewpoints, this paper suggests that even though peer review can detect some research misconducts this cannot be its major function, and that revising the system so that it can also detect misconducts may lead to an overall loss of epistemic merit of peer review.