UK Research Integrity Office

Posted by:

John Bothwell (group admin)

Date:

27 February 2007

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0 comments

The UK Research Integrity Office was founded last year. You can read about its launch here

In a nutshell, this was set up in the wake of things like the Hwang Woo-Suk cloning cock-up and aims to act as an advisory service for universities wanting to know how to go about investigating scientific misconduct. Their initial focus will be misconduct in medical research, so all of you out there who think it’s a scandal that the CK boundary is 10 million years out of kilter will just have to wait your turn…

I just made that up as an example, by the way.

Anyway, their Director has been in touch and would like to know if we could suggest ways in which potential whistleblowers could be supported. Whistleblowers are often young scientists within a lab, whose own careers can be adversely affected by accusing their superiors, hence his asking. Ideally we’d come up with some suggestions as to how suspicions of misconduct could be reported without risking our careers. How would we feel comfortable reporting misconduct, that sort of thing.

Would any of you be interested, perhaps as a small group, in drawing up a brief report (maybe 2 sides or so)? If so, drop me a line!

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