Integrity and trust in that integrity are fundamental to academic research. However, procedures for monitoring the trustworthiness of research, and for investigating cases where concern about possible data fraud have been raised are not well established. Here we suggest a practical approach for the investigation of work suspected of fraudulent data manipulation using Benford’s Law. This should be of value to both individual peer-reviewers and academic institutions and journals. In this, we draw inspiration from well-established practices of financial auditing. We provide synthesis of the literature on tests of adherence to Benford’s Law, culminating in advice of a single initial test for digits in each position of numerical strings within a dataset. We also recommend further tests which may prove useful in the event that specific hypotheses regarding the nature of data manipulation can be justified. Importantly, our advice differs from the most common current implementations of tests of Benford’s Law. Furthermore, we apply the approach to previously-published data, highlighting the efficacy of these tests in detecting known irregularities. Finally, we discuss the results of these tests, with reference to their strengths and limitations.

中文翻译：

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使用本福德定律调查和预防科学不端行为

诚信和对诚信的信任是学术研究的基础。然而，监测研究可信度的程序，以及调查可能存在数据欺诈问题的案件的程序还没有很好地建立起来。在这里，我们建议使用本福德定律调查涉嫌欺诈性数据操纵的工作的实用方法。这对同行评审个人以及学术机构和期刊都应该有价值。在这方面，我们从成熟的财务审计实践中汲取灵感。我们提供了关于遵守本福德定律测试的文献综合，最终建议对数据集中数字字符串的每个位置的数字进行单一初始测试。我们还建议进行进一步的测试，如果可以证明有关数据操作性质的特定假设是合理的，这些测试可能会证明是有用的。重要的是，我们的建议不同于当前最常见的本福德定律测试实施。此外，我们将该方法应用于先前发布的数据，强调了这些测试在检测已知违规行为方面的功效。最后，我们讨论了这些测试的结果，并参考了它们的优点和局限性。