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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I just noticed a nicely penned essay by our own Philip Ball on the crime and punishment in the lab — spurred by a recent article in Science, tracking the careers of a few dozen scientists judged unethical by the ORI. In addition to taking a good look at the purpose of punishment and potential for redemption, Ball asks about grey areas in misconduct. This is something we thought quite a bit about when publishing the Titus commentary and related editorial.
There are certainly many actions that are ethically questionable while not being intentional misconduct. Someone recently related a dilemma in which they weren’t sure if an idea for an experiment was something discussed with colleagues or part of a grant proposal they had reviewed. Acting on the latter, or sharing the idea with a grad stuent or postdoc certainly wouldn’t have been ethical. Has anyone in this forum ever experienced such dilemmas? -
Is it time to blame the mentor, yet?
The Chronicle of Higher Education, today, reports a new study by Titus and collaborators David Wright and Jered Cornelison. A subscription is required to view the Chronicle story.
In reviewing case files on 45 university trainees who committed research misconduct, they found that 3/4 of the mentors involved never examined trainee lab results and 2/3 never taught standards in keeping lab notebooks. The paper in Science and Engineering Ethics also requires a subscription.
The Chronicle article quotes a letter in Nature in response to our commentary on the topic. The authors of the letter essentially blame bad leadership, too, but only as it regards the example they set.
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