University Science Squads Ferret Out Fraud

Photo: Getty Images Scientific swindlers, beware. Universities are policing fraud and misuse of public funds better than ever before, according to federal regulators, who point to a surge in misconduct findings during the past 18 months as evidence of successful sleuthing. Each year, 30 to 40 institutions report to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) that they have investigated claims of falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism (FF&P) in scientific research. In the past decade, about 30% of investigations resulted in findings of scientific misconduct, and in the last year and a half, that figure has jumped to about 60%. Should working scientists worry about waning research ethics? No, says Alan R. Price, director of ORI's Division of Investigative Oversight. He reads the rising rate of misconduct findings as an indicator that universities are becoming more skilled at ferreting out breaches of integrity. "Things that in the past have been handled as employment problems, grievances or academic misconduct matters are now being investigated as scientific misconduct if the act was committed under a grant," Price says. "When we first started, institutions were not adept at doing these cases." Now university administrators realize that all parties involved in a grant could be committing misconduct if they, for example, falsify data in grant-funded research, or copy without attribution from published work. The rules reach not just scientists, but also grant administrators, nurses, data coordinators, and students. In addition to extending the reach of their investigations, some schools have bettered their techniques. They have learned, how to sequester evidence and protect the identity of informants. Some schools have named research integrity officers to ensure senior administrators hear accusations of FF&P. "Globally, they are doing much better," Price says. "Orders of magnitude better." QUESTIONS FROM CONGRESS Ten years ago, congressional concern over charges that scientists had cheated on federal grants resulted in heightened regulations that irked many in the academic community. "Congress said, 'Look. We're not going to keep dumping money into the biomedical research community unless you guys get your house in order,'" says Mary D. Scheetz, director of extramural research for ORI, which oversees probes of scientific misconduct for all Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) agencies. University committees field accusations of misconduct and launch preliminary inquiries. If enough evidence turns up at the inquiry phase, the school launches a full investigation. The University of Pittsburgh, for example, impanels a group of three to five peers of the accused scientists. Faculty members report to faculty panels; students and staffers face panels of peers and supervisors. Jerome Rosenberg, a scientist and former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, oversees the process, helping the amateur sleuths turn in a professional performance. "The judgments have to be made by ad hoc groups who spend a lot of time going through the record and the data," Rosenberg says. Peer panels offer powerful examples for faculty members. "Letting us control the process of evaluating the faculty member is to everyone's advantage," says Eva Pell, vice president for research at Pennsylvania State University. "It empowers us to make the case for proper behavior and it allows those who are much more familiar with the individual to give a fair hearing." A while back, Scheetz conducted a bit of informal research to evaluate the quality of university investigations. She compared 20 academic inquiry files to the federal template for how such probes should be done, a model that is available to all universities. Two-thirds of the inquiry files were of such poor quality, she says, that had she been called upon the grade them, she would have given them an F. "The goal was to get a snapshot of how well they [university investigators] were doing. They weren't doing well," Scheetz says. "Either, a) they didn't know what they were doing, which I find hard to believe, or b) they just wanted it off their desk." CAREER CONSEQUENCES Scientists sympathetic to the impulse to slough paperwork--by any means necessary--might want to reconsider. Even though the ORI or another federal agency oversees the process, researchers participate in all sides of academic investigations; careers and reputations are on the line. At some point, every scientist will eventually be an investigator, witness, or suspect of wrongdoing; others will have to defend their allies. Careers of both innocent and guilty evaporate during inquiries, Price says. Publications drawn from tainted research must be withdrawn, and innocent coauthors share their colleague's taint. Students may see years of work washed away by association with a scientist caught cheating. Government agencies may demand that institutions return money, should publicly financed data be falsified. Washington, DC, attorney Barbara Mishkin conducts compliance audits for university administrators anxious to ensure that the machinery for detecting and prosecuting research wrongdoers works effectively. For the most part universities do their jobs well and fairly, in her opinion. Given the grave consequences for scientists caught up in a probe, excellence in investigations is important, she adds. "All of this has very career-defeating ramifications, as well as fiscal burdens," Mishkin says. "I started out defending individual scientists accused of misconduct, and I can tell you it not only makes it impossible for them to concentrate on science, but they use all their emotional and financial resources to fight. Even being accused is disruptive of their careers and of their family relationships. It's a very destructive process. They never fully recover, scientifically, emotionally, or financially." About 3,500 small businesses, research institutions, and schools get National Institutes of Health grants each year. ORI hears from only a few. "Ninety percent or better of the reports we get are from the major research institutions," Price says. The incidence of misconduct, he says, is pretty much a function of dollar volume. The more NIH money flowing into a school, the more likely it is that problems come to the attention of ORI. Reports must be issued when enough information is found at the inquiry phase to justify an investigation, whether or not misconduct is ultimately confirmed. Each year, 75 to 100 institutions conduct inquiries that result in about 30 to 40 investigations. These days, as universities gain experience, more than half the investigations end up with a finding of scientific misconduct. "They are getting more used to the kinds of things that we are interested in," Price says. Universities now check the books of the most respected researchers; even their administrative assistants can face scrutiny. Scheetz agrees that university systems for handling misconduct charges have improved. Attitudes toward the problem have changed. Federal monitoring has driven the fraudulent researcher into plain view. "The scientific community was in denial for a long time. But just because someone wears a white lab coat, that does not absolve them of responsibility for cheating," she says. Despite increased scrutiny, some scientists still exploit their access to federal funding. "A lot of investigators believe when they get the grant, it's their money. It's not," Scheetz says. "They are the steward of public funds." RESEARCH LAW SCHOOL Research integrity officer appointments, training programs, and compliance audits, which have contributed to improved academic investigations, follow a decade of learning the hard way that ignoring wrongdoing in the laboratory can carry consequences. A high-profile case turned the University of Minnesota into a learning laboratory for federal investigators 10 years ago and created a prototype for other institutions, Mishkin says. "The Department of Justice was investigating both the civil and the criminal side, and this [case] is where they learned what to look for," she explains. The university paid the US government a settlement of $32 million (US). The focus of the probe was an antirejection biologic developed in the early 1990s by renowned transplant surgeon John Najarian and distributed through the university's Minnesota Antilymphocyte Globulin (MALG) Program. A federal court eventually cleared Najarian of wrongdoing. He denies all charges, as he had through the lengthy investigation and trial. "[The court] found that there was no misconduct of any sort on our part and, as the judge pointed out, there was no basis for the case," the surgeon says. From 1993 to 1996, in tandem with the federal probe, the University of Minnesota spent more than $3 million to conduct its own inquiry, $2.5 million to respond to federal subpoenas, and another $1 million to cover legal fees for other faculty members and staff caught up in the investigation. Called in by the school, Mishkin found flaws in the system for handling grant funds. Many grant administrators had worked their way up from secretarial or clerical positions and had not been trained in NIH rules. Scientists and academic overseers alike had abdicated responsibility for watching over the money, according to the lawyer, and the university watchdog machinery lacked central control. Systemic gaps that leave schools vulnerable to ethics violations were not unique to Minnesota, Mishkin says. And, she adds, neither heightened awareness nor augmented oversight has eliminated such infractions. "There's an awful lot of slippage and disorganization in the grants administration process at most universities." Peg Brickley (pegbrickley@hotmail.com) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia.

University Science Squads Ferret Out Fraud

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