Repairing Research Integrity
Brendan Maher
Tuesday, 17 June 2008 18:51 UTC
Update (4 August): Nature just published a handful of letters in response to the commentary from Sandra Titus James Wells and Lawrence Rhoades.
Sandra Titus, James Wells and Lawrence Rhoades provide a stirring indictment of the research community in a commentary this week. Research integrity can’t be maintained if misconduct goes unreported, they say. And a survey they commissioned through the Office of Research Ingegrity indicates there could be as many as a thousand unreported instances of misconduct a year.
The authors promote a zero tolerance policy among institutions and make other recommendations. An editorial this week makes a broader call for change, recognizing that not all incidents require full on investigations with punitive action, it calls instead for enhanced structures to use instances of mistake and misconduct as learning experiences that might inform better policies.
How could better policies push back against this seeming flood of misconduct?
Updated 04 August 2008 19:22 UTC
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In the U.S.A. where prestige,success,
and money are considered more important
than curiosity, creativeness, and co-
operation, many feel that dishonesty
is inevitable. The medical trades then have the same sort of people that in-
habit the corporate boardrooms to the detriment of us ordinary people. (see
“No Contest” by Alfie Kohn and “A Gen-
eral Theory of Love” by Thomas Lewis et. al.) -
The Blog Medical Writing, Editing & Grantsmanship reports on our commentary and editorial. This blog has had lively discussions on the Hellinga retraction and fallout as reported by our own Erika Check Hayden in a recent article and in an editorial on the subject
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Help needed to fight with research misconduct…
I worked in one of the most prestigious institutes in Boston and the world. In the work, I could not be able to recapitulate and develop a major story in the polycystic kidney disease field. Later I found out that some of the important data that were published and used by the laboratory to apply for NIH grants were falsified and fabricated. Astoundingly, my findings also indicated that several top laboratories in the field are probably involving in fabrication and/or falsification of scientific data. I presented the evidences and made complaints to the principle investigator of the laboratory and later the officials in the institute. However, I was retaliated against for my whistle blowing and was asked to leave my position. I have made research misconduct allegation and retaliation allegation in Office of Research Integrity in US Department of Health and Human Services.
Unfortunately, ORI only asked the institute set up self-investigation panels for both issues. After my complaining, the institute egregiously engaged in the retaliation and threatening, attempting to intimidate me. After an extremely unfair investigation, the institute terminated my position before the investigation to research misconduct actually started, releasing a clear signal to the people of research misconduct that the institute is helping them cover up their wrongdoings. If the research misconduct is covered up, millions dollars of taxpayers’ money could be in danger of being wasted, the public health could be in danger of unprotected, and the truth might be buried by the lies.
Therefore, I am seeking for urgent assistance from anyone who will be able to give me a hand on this matter. My question is, how do we expose their misconducts in an effective way? I have tried to write to the journal, and my comments were largely ignored.
I would like to remind my fellow whistle blowers. My lesson is, in no case, should you go to the officer of research integrity within the institute by your own. Otherwise, you would be squeezed like a bug by the officer of research integrity.
Your kind assistance and/or information will be highly appreciated by all honest and hard-working scientists.
If you are interested in knowing the specific story, please contact me at lincbacon@yahoo.com.
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The paper by Titus et al., “Repairing Research Integrity,” is typical Office of Research Integrity (ORI)artful dodgery. The office has refused to investigate or hold workshops on the issue of conflicts of interest among presidents, deans, and physicians at academic medical centers. There is no disputing that leaders set the tone. Many have accepted posts on corporate boards of directors where they have a primary legal fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders that is in conflict with the mission of the university, their students and patients. I have often described this easy acceptance of the corporate ethic as “a Faustian pact.” A research project to investigate conflicts of interest was rejected by an ORI official.
As for research misconduct, ORI is a paper tiger. The penalty for plagiarism, falsification, or fabrication should be immediate dismissal and loss of medical license, not loss of federal grants for a period of three years! ORI claims it lacks authority to impose steep penalties, but I have never seen an ORI request for broad authority.
Self-policing by individual institutions is not working. Unless and until there are strict rules prohibiting corporate involvement by academic leaders, corporations and their money will continue to call the shots while patients and students will be the losers.
Lynn Howard Ehrle, M Ed, former V-P, Consumer Alliance of Michigan (1970s); Senior Biomedical Policy Analyst, Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Chair, OCA’s 41-member International Science
Oversight Board; freelance medical writer- National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981, based in Plymouth, Michigan
Email: ehrlebird@organicconsumers.org -
The MWE&G blog to which Brendan links above features the suggestion of an oath of conduct for researchers, rather like the Hippocratic oath, which has been suggested on previous occasions in various forms. Would this help to address some of the conflicts of interest described above?
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Nature Chemical Biology describes the retraction of a paper in the journal in its June editorial (site license or subscription required). The editorial details the story of how the paper was considered, how the problems came to light, and adds this paragraph:
We commend CGK scientists for raising the initial concerns with the Science and Nature Chemical Biology papers and the KAIST investigating committees for their efforts to date. It is reassuring that Korean institutions are taking a hard line on scientific misconduct. However, we do question the timing and content of the KAIST press release of February 29, 2008, which was made public without advance notice to the journal. It is not unusual for an institute to announce that an investigation is underway and to make another announcement at its conclusion. Ideally, though, investigating committees contact journals well in advance of making public statements, thereby ensuring that the information communicated is accurate at all stages.
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Apologies, correction to the above, the extract above is from the July 2008 editorial of N Chem Bio, not June as I stated.
Correct reference: Nature Chemical Biology 4, 381 (2008).
Here is the last paragraph of the editorial:
Although the reasons for retracting the Nature Chemical Biology paper are well established, the course of events in the Kim laboratory that led to the reported scientific misconduct remain unclear. We fully agree with a recent _Nature editorial (Nature 453, 258; 2008) that has urged greater transparency from authors and institutional investigators in cases involving scientific misconduct and insisted on clear and complete final reports of “what went wrong.” As the KAIST committee completes its deliberations, we urge them to provide a full accounting of the case and make their findings widely available in English. This example would serve as a model for future investigations committed to maintaining the integrity of science and the scientific literature. The scientific community and the public deserve nothing less._ -
The anonymous commenter posting on 20 June relates a story that sounds all too familiar. While we welcome such comments about personal experiences relevant to this discussion, please remember that this is not the appropriate place to air specific grievances with respect to named persons or institutions. Posts that do this may have to be moderated.
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I recommend BETRAYERS OF THE TRUTH: FRAUD AND DECEIT IN THE HALLS OF SCIENCE by Nick Wade and William Broad along with the recent amazing novel by Allegra Goodman, INTUITION. Reading these texts, along with my personal experience of 34 years as a research scientist, convinces me that research fraud cannot be explained by the “bad apple theory”, and that the causes of fraud are structural more than personal.
I also wonder why most writings about research fraud describe actions by researchers, but completely omit the fraud committed by anonymous manuscript reviewers. Who among us has not experienced arbitrary rejection by one journal followed by immediate acceptance of the exact same text by another equally prestigious journal? I and my colleagues surely have. To borrow from Dylan, “Somebody better investigate soon”.
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Tim Clair: I think the word “fraud” is too strong to use in this context. Reputable journals use two or more independent reviewers for each manuscript that is peer-reviewed, and the process is overseen by an editor — in the case of many high-profile journals, the editor is a professional editor not a member of the academic community of active researchers.
I agree that the peer-review process has its critics and is accused of various kinds of bias, but I feel that you are using the accusatory term “fraud” loosely and without justification.For example, a journal like Nature can publish less than 10 per cent of the manuscripts submitted to it. We have to turn away many mss that are not “wrong” in any sense. Yet it is not “fraud”, or anything like it, to decline a ms with peer-revewers’ reports stating that the ms is technically sound but does not quite make the bar for the editorial criteria for the journal. Such a paper might well get published in a more specialist, yet equally prestigious, journal very quickly, as the second journal may not need to go to further reviewers.
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