SOCIOLOGY: Scientific Misconduct: Do the Punishments Fit the Crime?

This deliverable DIII.1.2 is part of work package 3 in which indicators are gathered on the extent of misconduct and how institutions respond to breaches of scientific integrity. As a part of the empirical phase in PRINTEGER it contributes to our analysis of what policies and organizational responses are most likely to engender a culture of integrity in research organisations. The exploration of the incidence of misconduct is combined with the institutional response, since it is partly through this response that misconduct is made explicit or even defined. This deliverable reflects on one of the key questions in the scientific integrity debate; what is the incidence or extent of misconduct in science? This is one of the questions raised many years ago, but a clear-cut answer is not available and may be even impossible to formulate. What we know about misconduct in science has for the largest part been derived from self-report studies and rough estimations in statistics of universities, control agencies or funding bodies. Therefore, it remains difficult to conclude whether or not these estimations are correct, significant and reliable. In this deliverable, we report about our attempt to gather empirical data on breaches of integrity that have ended up in official administrative or institutional (academic) files e.g. cases which are visible in administrative procedures of research and research funding institutions or bodies for investigating misconduct cases. With this report, we do not pretend to have found a clear answer to the incidence question. We do however aim to make visible the procedural chain that is followed when a case of misconduct comes to the surface. Besides a ‘mapping’ exercise, we aim at discussing theoretical and methodological issues when it comes to gathering data relying upon official procedures. Registration practices differ greatly from one research institution to another, from one country to another. This makes comparative research in general (and between the countries involved in this deliverable) very difficult if not impossible. However, we argue that issues concerning denunciation, discovery and registration practices, whistle blowing, transparency, gaining access, confidentiality, reputational bias etc. are precisely worth a close scrutiny and must be discussed when doing research on the prevalence of misconduct in science in a European context. Indeed, in our view these aspects of the incidence question are not merely technical (or methodological) but they reveal a lot about the nature of scientific misconduct and about how scientific integrity and misconduct are intimately intertwined with daily scientific and academic practices and organization. They are mutually constitutive. Hence, there may be significant differences between disciplinary scientific practices as well as between national science systems (countries). It reveals a lot about how alleged breaches of integrity and misconduct are experienced, detected, reported, processed, registered and reacted upon. Starting from a state of the art of what has been measured in previous research, we focused on the biases that have to be taken into account when measuring the extent and incidence of misconduct. Besides a discussion on issues related to the use of official statistics, self-report studies and reputational biases we reflect on the conceptual issues embedded in the process of registration and their consequences for registering practices in administrative procedures. In a next step, we discuss the separate methodologies of the partners involved in this deliverable and the results that were obtained. This report wraps up with a concluding part, reflecting on future directions for research on this topic and the data sources that are useful to measure misconduct in science.

The issue of how to best minimize scientific misconduct remains a controversial topic among bioethicists, professors, policymakers, and attorneys. This paper suggests that harsher criminal sanctions against misconduct , better protections for whistleblowers, and the creation of due process standards for misconduct investigations are urgently needed. Although the causes of misconduct and estimates of problem remain varied, the literature suggests that scientific misconduct-fraud, fabrication, and plagiarism of scientific research-continues to damage public health and trust in science. Providing stricter criminal statutes against misconduct is necessary to motivate whistleblowers and deter wrongdoers, and the provision of basic due process protections is necessary for ensuring a fair and balanced misconduct investigation. "There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the older, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order." Nicolo Machiavelli (In Shamoo and Dunigan 2000)

The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2005

Improvement in policy for the management of scientific misconduct has been slow. While assurance of due process at the ORI level is now in place, similar protections at the institutional level and institutional responsibility for further oversight and a workplace where the responsible conduct of research can be practiced have not yet been addressed. In contrast, policy regarding human subject protection has evolved rapidly to reflect firmer norms, with decisive priority given to subject protection over scientific or social needs. Perhaps because scientific misconduct policy has the potential to harm the careers of individual scientists and harms to individual subjects are thought to be indirect, the scientific community has been successful in blocking every move toward testing more rigorous regulation. The mantras that scientists can discipline their own, and the price of competitive science is some level of scientific misconduct are not persuasive. The standards by which science is judged should not be an exception to those governing others who deal with the public's money and have a duty to the public interest.

Journal of information ethics, 1996

In many ways, science seems cloaked in an aura of mystery and puritya noble venture in pursuit of the truth. This, perhaps, has protected it from the level of scrutiny normally applied to multi-million dollar operations into which Big Science has grown (Panel on Scientific Responsibility, 1992). Recent news accounts of the AIDS scandal (Crewdson, 1989), with accusations of falsified data and wrongful discovery claims, and of the fraudulent breast cancer research (Crewdson, 1994), add to a growing mountain of evidence that suggests that scientists are as morally frail as the rest of humanity (Bell, 1992; Broad & Wade, 1982; Kohn, 1986). Although the savings and loan frauds caused anguish and financial woes, falsification of medical data has potentially endangered the lives of millions (Committee on Government Operations, 1990). This essay will challenge a common presumption that scientific misconduct is an individual moral dilemma, a presumption that may be preventing society and the research community from adequately confronting this issue. In addition, this individual focus will be examined in its role of inadvertently creating circumstances that tolerate and even condone unethical behaviors. Finally, possible alternatives will be suggested for developing a more ethical science and research environment.

Medicine Health Care and Philosophy

This paper discusses the criminalization of scientific misconduct, as discussed and defended in the bioethics literature. In doing so it argues against the claim that fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) together identify the most serious forms of misconduct, which hence ought to be criminalized, whereas other forms of misconduct should not. Drawing the line strictly at FFP is problematic both in terms of what is included and what is excluded. It is also argued that the criminaliza-tion of scientific misconduct, despite its anticipated benefits, is at risk of giving the false impression that dubious practices falling outside the legal regulation " do not count ". Some doubts are also raised concerning whether criminalization of the most serious forms of misconduct will lower the burdens for universities or successfully increase research integrity. Rather, with or without criminalization, other measures must be taken and are probably more important in order to foster a more healthy research environment.

Minerva, 1985

Quantitative Science Studies, 2020

Misconduct in science is a timely and substantively important problem in the social study of science. But in the absence of comprehensive and reliable data needed for analysis, formidable obstacles stand in the way of its being studied quantitively. Accessible databases, including government data, are flawed, while undertaking new data collection presents its own problems. First, little is known about biases in official government reports. Second, official reports exclude classes of malfeasance other than fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism of evidence (FFP). Third, while drawing on official data is expedient, available official information is thin; it tells little about miscreants and fails to identify potential causes of their actions and the environments in which misconduct occurred. Fourth, it also fails the test of permitting estimates to be made of populations at risk, making it impossible to calculate incidence. A healthy dose of skepticism is in order in evaluating bo...

ISBE Newsletter, 2005

Publications, 2014

This article draws on research traditions and insights from Criminology to elaborate on the problems associated with current practices of measuring scientific misconduct. Analyses of the number of retracted articles are shown to suffer from the fact that the distinct processes of misconduct, detection, punishment, and publication of a retraction notice, all contribute to the number of retractions and, hence, will result in biased estimates. Self-report measures, as well as analyses of retractions, are additionally affected by the absence of a consistent definition of misconduct. This problem of definition is addressed further as stemming from a lack of generally valid definitions both on the level of measuring misconduct and on the level of scientific practice itself. Because science is an innovative and ever-changing endeavor, the meaning of misbehavior is permanently shifting and frequently readdressed and renegotiated within the scientific community. Quantitative approaches (i.e., statistics) alone, thus, are hardly able to accurately portray this dynamic phenomenon. It is argued that more research on the different processes and definitions associated with misconduct and its detection and sanctions is needed. The existing quantitative approaches need to be supported by qualitative research better suited to address and uncover processes of negotiation and definition.

Accountability in Research, 2013

Misconduct in science and research became the subject of significant public attention and Congressional scrutiny beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to public statements, policies, and finally formal federal regulations being promulgated by Government agency officials. The Office of Research Integrity Early History of Research Misconduct and Public and Congressional Scrutiny in the 1980s This paper is on the history of the Federal research misconduct regulations and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), on the twentieth anniversary of its creation (including some personal views by the author, who was a senior official in ORI from 1989 to 2006, as well as some contrasts with its sister office in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Inspector General), and it begins with a summary of the public and Congressional controversy over misconduct in science in the 1970s and 1980s. Misconduct in science is not new-even Newton, Mendel, and Pasteur have been suspected in recent years of having manipulated their data more than a century ago. But between 1974 and 1981, twelve major cases of misconduct in science were made public, including four cases in 1980-1981 in medical and biomedical research funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at major eastern universities, followed by several more public cases in the early 1980s and 1990s. For example (Mitcham, 2003) (see his timeline): Summerlin's falsely painted mouse at Sloan Kettering in Good's lab (1974) Alsabti's plagiarism in dozens of papers at Jefferson Medical College (1978) Straus' oncology research fabrications at Boston University (1978) Soman's endocrinology data falsifications at Yale in Felig's lab (1980) Darsee's cardiology research fabrications at Harvard and Emory (1981) Long's cancer cell fabrications at Massachusetts General Hospital (1981) Spector's biochemical data fabrications at Cornell in Racker's lab (1981) Breuning's falsified mental health research at Pittsburgh under Braunwald (1983) Slutsky's radiology research falsifications at Univ. California San Diego (1985) Imanishi-Kari's alleged immunology falsifications at Tufts University (1986) Popovic's alleged retrovirus research falsifications at NIH under Gallo (1993). Such cases were exposed in several books, including