Your point earlier is critical for determining this:
Enforcing scientific ethical norms is supposed to be a last resort. We are supposed to exhaust every other avenue to correct them before making accusations of research misconduct. That is why, for example, I asked Jeanson to correct a clear misrepresentation: Would Jeanson Please Correct A Clear Misrepresentation?.
Any honest scientist, as soon as he saw this, would correct the misrepresentation. In that case, it would be a real misrepresentation, but we wouldn’t call it misconduct. We’d all see that the scientist responded to the community’s correction, and respect him for making the change. All of us make mistakes and oversights, and we’d just chalk this up an overzealous summary or overstatement of what he read. It’s just a mistake. A real mistake, but nothing to worry about.
However, if it is a serious error, and no correction is made, in that case the situation escalates. If we cared to push the issue, we probably would not call it research misconduct yet, but we might take this to others. If no correction was made then, the situation would escalate more.
So innocent mistakes can meet the definition of research misconduct on a surface level, but it is really in how we respond (or fail to respond) to correction that escalates it to research misconduct. That seems to be how the rules work. What do you think @sfmatheson?