Members of the UK Parliament are calling for the establishment of a new regulatory body to oversee academic research integrity and help prevent misconduct, according to a report published today (July 11) by the House of Commons’s Science and Technology Committee. The proposed “national research integrity committee” would be responsible for tightening up existing UK rules on research integrity for publicly funded universities and, in particular, making sure that institutions are complying with them.
“This has to be taken far more seriously,” Norman Lamb, chair of the committee that drafted the report and member of Parliament for North Norfolk, tells The Guardian. “Institutions with track records have been destroyed by scandals and crises. The danger is that something comes along out of the blue that completely undermines public trust.”
Technically, funding from UK research councils is already contingent on a university’s compliance with what’s known as the 2012 Concordat to ...
