| Abstract: | Fraud in the form of data fabrication/manipulation by scientists, heretofore ignored owing to its presumed nonexistence, is discussed as an area of potential interest for the study of deviant behavior. By way if illustration, twelve recent cases of scientific fraud are described. These examples serve to highlight the question of prevalence as their existence is evidence that deviance in science exists, and belies the argument that the normative structure of science makes such acts unlikely. Primary attention was given to the problem of explaining this atypical form of deviant behavior. Current popular efforts tend to be either individualistic “bad apple” explanations, or indictments of the pressures to produce inherent in the structure of modern science. A sociology of scientific deviance 1s offered by reveiwing the potential contributions of anomie, interactionist, and conflict theories. All were found to have significant application to the study of scientific deviance as a number of questions for further research are suggested. |
