Preventing Fraud Is A Task For Scientists, Not Congress

For the last five months, representatives of higher education associations and scientific societies have been working out guidelines on research fraud and misconduct The goal is to help universities to construct a process for dealing with any charges of impropriety made against members of faculty or staff. Universities must, by law, have such a process or forfeit eligibility for National Institutes of Health funding, and there are good reasons to believe that at least some institutions can, with help, improve their ability to handle these difficult cases. This is an important undertaking. Unless universities do, and are seen to do, a better job of dealing with fraud and misconduct than has been the norm in recent years, they run the risk of the government stepping in to take charge. In fact, the Congress almost passed a proposal before it adjourned in October that would have been a disaster for science and for universities precisely because it would allow government officials to meddle in what should remain university affairs. Collision Course The larger issue bere is whether the scientific profession and the institutions in which most basic science takes place can be relied upon to prevent fraud and misconduct— and to detect and punish it when it occurs. At stake is public confidence in the integrity of science and the reliability of its findings. And the hard fact is that the Congress and academic science now are on a collision course over this question. The Congress is a comparatively new participant in the issue of scientific fraud. Its first official intervention came in the NIH Reauthorization Act, passed in 1985. There the Congress directed NIH to issue regulations telling universities that they must put into place systems for receiving allegations of misconduct, seeing them through to resolution, and reporting them to the NIH in a timely manner. At the time, the Congress was responding to some sensational. revelations of research fraud at major universities, and it did so in a moderate and judicious manner. The underlying message of the legislation was that misconduct was known to occur, though not commonly, and that universities were responsible for dealing with it when it did. And because NIH had overall responsibility for overseeing the expenditure of its grant funds, it needed to be informed of any transgressions. Earlier this year, NIH dutifully issued draft regulations to implement the statute. Independently, the National Science Foundation issued instructions to its own grantees on how to deal with misconduct. But recently, the Congress’s attitude toward fraud and misconduct in science seems to have changed. For one thing, ethics in public life has become a major issue, and scandalous behavior in the administration, in Congress, and on Wall Street has become a staple of the nightly news. Against that background, the new allegations—and in several cases, revelations—of serious scientific misconduct that have recently been in the news are being seen as no different from insider trading, DOD procurement scandals, and just general sleaze. It hasn’t helped that some of the cases bear marks of investigative incompetence and a lack of institutional will to see the matter through to a painful conclusion. As with corruption in other areas, these examples have provided an irresistible target for congressional hearings and, ultimately for proposed legislation. No legislation on the subject was enacted in the 100th Congress, but there is little comfort to be taken from that fact. The leading candidate for enactment might well have passed, had it not been caught in the last-minute rush for adjournment. To put it bluntly, its passage would have been a calamity for the science community. The proposal would have established in the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services a new Office of Scientific integrity. The powers of this new directorate would substantially reverse the presumption of the 1985 legislation, which recognized an institution’s responsibility for the conduct of its members and placed the government in a monitoring role. If. enacted as proposed, the new office would have been empowered to receive allegations of misconduct and, if it chose, to investigate them independently of institutional processes. Moreover, it would have put government officials into matters that the government has never claimed a right to control, such as defining and enforcing the definition of adequate research records and establishing standards for scientific journals to protect against the publication of suspect manuscripts. While it did not pass, this proposal remains very much alive. Its principal advocates were Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairmen, respectively, of the subcommittee and the full committee in the House of Representatives with jurisdiction over NIH. If the two congressmen remain con- vinced that universities are unable to deal, with fraud and misconduct themselves, then we are quite likely to see the enactment of something like this year’s proposal in the future. Closing Ranks If that outcome is to be avoided, universities and scientists will need to think hard about what their responsibilities are and how best to discharge them. The question that needs to be answered is: Are universities likely to be able to deal with members of their own community who behave unethically in their research? Clearly, some in the Congress believe that universities cannot because the tendency of closely knit communities to close ranks when one of their members is under attack is too strong to overcome. An even broader argument is that no institution or profession wants to suffer the embarrassment of publicly disclosed misconduct, and so will act in ways that minimize or hide the misconduct, exculpate the offender, and even punish the accuser. In truth, the record of self-policing across society’s institutions is mixed. Congress, for example, does a poor job of monitoring and treating ethical misconduct among its members. Medical doctors are widely thought to be even less capable of policing their ranks, a perception that no doubt helps to explain the frequency of malpractice cases and the size of judgments. The record of business is generally deplorable, and the record of organized religion is largely unknowable. It is therefore clearly reasonable to doubt the ability of institutions, left to their own devices, to discipline themselves. At the same time, however, there are precious few good alternatives available to leaving institutions to police themselves. Any external enforcement system raises the problem of competence. This is an especially difficult problem in science, what the subject matters involved are likely to be specialized and complex. How does one engage the time and effort of people sufficiently knowledgeable in the scientific research being investigated to run a competent investigation? Furthermore, this requirement for specialized knowledge leads to many of the same problems that bedevil institutional processes. Those who are best able to judge the work of the accused are likely to be either friends or competitors of the accused. Even if they are willing to take the time to perform a thankless and painful task, there may still be strong reason to doubt the objectivity of the inquiry. Act Of Faith This year’s proposed legislation would have turned the whole matter over to the government. However, it takes a supreme act of faith or a strikingly antihistorical view of the world to believe that such an approach is desirable in this instance. We generally turn to government when the scope of the problem or the imminence of the danger it presents is so great that there is no workable alternative. International drug trafficking is an obvious case. So, too, are various forms of economic, environmental, and safety regulation. But does anyone seriously believe that the problem of research fraud is that grave or imminent a threat? In any event, none of these government efforts has so striking a record of success that we would choose it as a model. In the last analysis, there is no foolproof system for dealing with the problem of research fraud and misconduct. But a hard look at the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the alternatives strongly suggests that here the best solution can be found in an approach that balances institutional and governmental responsibilities and has each doing what it is best able to do. That was the approach contemplated in the 1985 act, and a model for its success can be found in the existing systems for monitoring and regulating human subject research and the care of animals used in research. These systems work, and work well, in ways that are consistent with long-standing and valuable traditions. They are evidence that universities can dis- charge difficult responsibilities well, and they support the determination of scientists and universities to resist any other attempts to hand responsibility for detecting and punishing fraud and misconduct over to the government. Robert Rosenzweig is president of the Association of American Universities.

Preventing Fraud Is A Task For Scientists, Not Congress

Become a Member of

Meet the Author

Robert Rosenzweig Rosenzweig

Published In

December 1988

Related Research Resources

Bunsen Burners and Bad Hair Days

Research Resources

Podcasts

Webinars

Videos

Infographics

eBooks

Taking the Guesswork Out of Quality Control Standards

PFAS: The Forever Chemicals

Unlocking the Unattainable in Gene Construction

Comparing Analytical Solutions for High-Throughput Drug Discovery

Products

Product News

Thermo Scientific™ Centrifuges with GreenCool Technology

Singleron Biotechnologies and Hamilton Bonaduz AG Announce the Launch of Tensor to Advance Single Cell Sequencing Automation

Zymo Research Launches Research Grant to Empower Mapping the RNome

Cytosurge Appoints Magid Haddouchi as Chief Commercial Officer