WASHINGTON—If NIH is the crown jewel of federal biomedical research, then scientific misconduct is a scratch on its surface. And Brian Kimes is the man that NIH officials hope will begin to restore the luster their organization has lost in the eyes of Congress and the public.
On April 10 Kimes became acting director of the newly formed Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI). The office was created by officials within the Public Health Service, NIH’s parent agency, as part of a two-step process to deal with misconduct in all programs funded by the agency. It will take over many of the duties now performed by the beleaguered institutional liaison office headed by Janet Newburgh.
Agency officials hope that the new mechanism will convince Congress that NIH is capable of rooting out, and ultimately preventing, most cases of misconduct by scientists. Its duties, as spelled out in the March 18 Federal ...
