Footnotes

• Contributors EHM is professor in the College of Medicine (University of Tennessee), focusing on health law and bioethics. Her recent article (J Law & Biosciences 2021; 8(1): 1-30) arguing, for the first time anywhere, that organisations such as corporations are capable of directly committing research misconduct—by the definition—set the stage for this article. JCW has served as Academic Clinical Quality Director, directly overseeing multiple collaborative scholarly projects. EHM and JCW contributed to the conceptualisation, investigation, original draft writing, and review and editing the draft. EHM is the named guarantor of the article, both authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

• Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

• Competing interests None declared.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.