[Beautification of data: Minimal fraud, incompetence or mixture of both]

Abstract

The beautification of data is the process of reporting results of a research in a way that does not correspond to reality, in order to present them in a more favorable or attractive way. The border between errors due to methodological ignorance, embellishment of reality and fraud is sometimes difficult to determine. It is the intentional nature and the repetition of these "arrangements" that are the real switch to deliberate fraud. The emergence of regulatory procedures, such as clinical trial registries, "reporting guidelines", improvement of "peer review" and data sharing, are some of the measures used to fight against and improve transparency of clinical research.