Findings of Research Misconduct.

BackgroundResearch on research integrity has tended to focus on frequency of research misconduct and factors that might induce someone to commit research misconduct. A definitive answer to the first question has been elusive, but it remains clear that any research misconduct is too much. Answers to the second question are so diverse, it might be productive to ask a different question: What about how research is done allows research misconduct to occur?MethodsWith that question in mind, research integrity officers (RIOs) of the 62 members of the American Association of Universities were invited to complete a brief survey about their most recent instance of a finding of research misconduct. Respondents were asked whether one or more good practices of research (e.g., openness and transparency, keeping good research records) were present in their case of research misconduct.ResultsTwenty-four (24) of the respondents (39% response rate) indicated they had dealt with at least one finding of research misconduct and answered the survey questions. Over half of these RIOs reported that their case of research misconduct had occurred in an environment in which at least nine of the ten listed good practices of research were deficient.ConclusionsThese results are not evidence for a causal effect of poor practices, but it is arguable that committing research misconduct would be more difficult if not impossible in research environments adhering to good practices of research.

Nearly 90 % of allegations of biomedical research misconduct in the United States are dismissed by responsible institutions without any faculty assessment or auditable record. Recently, members of the U.S. Congress have complained that the penalties for those against whom findings of research misconduct are made are too light and that too few grant funds associated with research misconduct have been recovered for use by other researchers and taxpayers. Here we discuss the laws that empower federal agencies that can oversee investigations of biomedical research misconduct: the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), both located within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Research misconduct investigations pertaining to U.S. physical sciences funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) are overseen by the NSF’s OIG. While OIGs may provide some improvement over the ORI in the handling of research misconduct, we have found that a much more serious flaw exists which undermines an ability to conduct performance audits of the effectiveness by which allegations of research misconduct are handled in the United States. Specifically, sufficient data do not need to be retained by U.S. research institutions funded by HHS or NSF to allow effective audit of why allegations of research misconduct are dismissed before being seen by faculty inquiry or investigative committees. U.S. federal Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS/Yellow Book), if applied to the research misconduct oversight process, would allow a determination of whether the handling of allegations of biomedical research misconduct actually functions adequately, and if not, how it might be improved. In particular, we propose that independent, external peer review under GAGAS audit standards should be instituted without delay in assessing the performance of ORI, or any other similarly tasked federal agency, in handling allegations of research misconduct.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11948-016-9798-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Nearly ninety percent of allegations of biomedical research misconduct in the United States are dismissed by responsible institutions without any faculty assessment or auditable record. Recently, members of the U.S. Congress have complained that the penalties for those against whom findings of research misconduct are made are too light and that too few grant funds associated with research misconduct have been recovered for use by other researchers and taxpayers. Here we describe the laws that empower federal agencies which can oversee investigations of biomedical research misconduct: the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) and Office of the Inspector General (OIG), both located within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Research misconduct pertaining to U.S. physical sciences funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) is overseen by the NSF's OIG. While OIGs may provide some improvement over ORI in the handling of research misconduct, we have found that a much more serious flaw exists which undermines an ability to conduct performance audits as to the effectiveness by which allegations of research misconduct are handled in the United States. Federal audit standards (GAGAS/Yellow Book), if applied to the handling of research misconduct, would allow a determination as to whether the handling of allegations of biomedical research misconduct actually functions adequately, and if not, how it might be improved. Specifically, we propose that independent, external peer review under GAGAS audit standards should be instituted without delay in assessing the performance of ORI, or any other similarly tasked federal agency, in handling allegations of research misconduct.

In their report in this supplement on research regulatory systems, Barbara Bierer and Mark Barnes note that, when research misconduct has been detected but not yet proven, the individual with institutional responsibility for oversight of research misconduct investigations “may determine that notification of relevant journals or professional societies and correction or full retraction of implicated papers or presentations is appropriate. In those cases, even when a finding of research misconduct per se has not been made or has not been explicitly stated, the journal, professional society, and their readers or members may draw their own conclusions as to what led to the retraction or correction.” This statement highlights an aspect of the reviewed regulatory schemes that creates vulnerability for institutions of higher education subject to the regulations: while, as the authors suggest, it may be “appropriate” to notify third parties (that is, journals, professional societies, and other academic institutions) of suspected research misconduct, there is no regulatory obligation to provide such a notification, and, in fact, providing early (or any) notification is contrary to the confidentiality provisions of the research misconduct regulations. Moreover, the institution—and individuals acting on behalf of the institution—may face legal exposure for notifying outside entities.

To find research misconduct in research that has been supported by federal funds, an institution must determine that the misconduct was committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly. “Intentional” and “knowing” are straightforward standards. Yet “reckless” often mystifies institutions, which struggle to assess whether a respondent’s conduct should be deemed “reckless,” or merely negligent. This difficulty is most pronounced when allegations are lodged against the author under whose supervision the primary research was conducted – most often, the senior and/or corresponding author of a published paper who may not have been directly involved in performing the experiments or preparing the data under scrutiny. In these situations, investigation committees and the institutional “deciding official” must assess whether the supervising scientist is guilty of research misconduct – based on the theory that their supervision of the research and development of the publication containing falsified, fabricated, or plagiarized information was reckless – even if that person did not perform the experiment or assemble the research records in question. This paper seeks to provide a framework for evaluating the circumstances in which past supervisory conduct should be deemed “reckless” and thus a basis on which a finding of research misconduct may be made.

The proportion of research misconduct cases among trainees in the biomedical sciences has risen, raising the question of why, and what are the responsibilities of research administrators and the research community to address this problem. Although there is no definitive research about causes, for trainees the relationship with a research mentor should play a major role in preventing actions that constitute research misconduct (fabrication, falsification and plagiarism). Examination of the limited literature and of the number of cases closed by the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) between 2009 and 2013 raises questions about the mentor-student relationship and what it should be accomplishing. But many gaps in policy and its implementation inhibit this role. There is no acknowledgement of mentorship in federal regulations and research on how to teach research integrity is woefully underdeveloped, especially for international trainees. And some institutional research integrity officers may have had little preparation for the role.

These articles first published on 15 August 2013 and 21 August 2013 on the Wiley Online Library have been retracted at the request of the Research Integrity Officer (RIO) of The Pennsylvania State University, in agreement with the corresponding authors, the journal's Editor-in-Chief, and Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, because portions of the reported results cannot be considered reliable or reproducible. Following an investigation by the RIO of The Pennsylvania State University, it was found that the data in Figure 2a,b and Figure S1a,b (Supporting Information) of the article with DOI: 10.1002/adma.201301243, and Figure S3 (Supporting Information) of the article with DOI: 10.1002/adma.201301370 were falsified. Data regarding the carbon electrode material, A-aMEGO, reported to have a density of 1.15 g cm-3 , in the article with DOI: 10.1002/adma.201301243, were falsified. The RIO of The Pennsylvania State University confirms that the investigation found that the mentioned data were falsified by the first author. No findings of research misconduct were made against the co-authors of these publications. [1] M. Ghaffari, Y. Zhou, H. Xu, M. Lin, T. Y. Kim, R. S. Ruoff, Q. M. Zhang, Adv. Mater. 25: 2013, 4879. doi:10.1002/adma.201301243 [2] M. Ghaffari, W. Kinsman, Y. Zhou, S. Murali, Q. Burlingame, M. Lin, R. S. Ruoff, Q. M. Zhang, Adv. Mater. 25: 2013, 6277. doi:10.1002/adma.201301370.

Our national scientific enterprise has a crisis of reproducibility. While this phenomenon has many contributors, one is the proliferation of data manipulation. Data manipulation may range from seemingly innocuous to brazen to the point of verging on criminal. This latter category has recently received more attention, stimulating a debate about the handling of such unpleasant matters. We co-authors have instigated and interacted with numerous research integrity investigations and believe the current model of handling potential violations of research integrity standards is deeply flawed. Institution-led investigations are fundamentally conflicted because of the potential for institutional reputational damage and financial harm from a finding of research misconduct. Concerns are often handled with secrecy, lethargy, and limited technical analysis. Integrity lapses are frequently handled with a lack of openness, accountability and proportional consequences, which have weakened public trust in the scientific enterprise.We propose that research integrity violations of substantial scale should be independently investigated by appropriately resourced specialists. Such investigations should be completed within a time frame that facilitates meaningful corrective action when required or exoneration of the accused party when appropriate; completion of an investigation should rarely extend beyond one year and the results of the investigation should be made public.

Literature Review Teacher Beliefs Personal Concepts Teacher personal concepts for this study is defined as how teacher candidates view the study of elementary mathematics content and processes and their confidence...

Findings of Research Misconduct

We describe the ongoing citations to biomedical articles affected by scientific misconduct, and characterize the papers that cite these affected articles. The citations to 102 articles named in official findings of scientific misconduct during the period of 1993 and 2001 were identified through the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science database. Using a stratified random sampling strategy, we performed a content analysis of 603 of the 5,393 citing papers to identify indications of awareness that the cited articles affected by scientific misconduct had validity issues, and to examine how the citing papers referred to the affected articles. Fewer than 5% of citing papers indicated any awareness that the cited article was retracted or named in a finding of misconduct. We also tested the hypothesis that affected articles would have fewer citations than a comparison sample; this was not supported. Most articles affected by misconduct were published in basic science journals, and we found little cause for concern that such articles may have affected clinical equipoise or clinical care.

Since 1992 the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) had reviewed investigations of scientific misconduct in research funded by the US Public Health Service (PHS). ORI defined scientific misconduct as "fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the scientific community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research". The purpose of this study was to summarize the findings and administrative actions reported in ORI notices of scientific misconduct in clinical trials occurring between May 1992 and 2002. Findings of misconduct were gathered from publicly available sources: the ORI annual reports and the NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts. Clinical trials accounted for 17 (13%) of the 136 investigations that resulted in findings of scientific misconduct, and they were noted in 12 (11%) of the 113 brief reports of investigations closed with findings of no scientific misconduct. In clinical trials, the most severe sanction, debarment from US Government funding, was applied in six (35%) of the cases of misconduct compared to 79 (66%) of 119 cases from all other types of research combined. Of individuals cited for misconduct in clinical trials, three (18%) held doctorates in contrast to 81 (68%) in other types of research. In clinical trials, junior employees may bear the burden of sanction for scientific misconduct. The most frequently applied sanction was the requirement that a plan of supervision of the sanctioned employees accompany any future application for funding which would include them. This imposition of sanction on an individual employee does not address possible causes of misconduct which may be inherent in the overall pattern of leadership, training and supervision in the trial. Furthermore, the definition of misconduct, as interpreted by the Departmental Appeals Board, excludes carelessness and other poor research practices that may lead to dissemination of more incorrect data than misconduct.

The overturning and withdrawal of several of the Office of Research Integrity's (ORI's) findings of scientific misconduct have called its role into question. The contested findings of scientific misconduct that have been tried before the hearing body have been based on lengthy and expensive ORI investigations. How could ORI have failed to prove its findings of scientific misconduct after the commitment of substantial resources that far exceed those devoted during institutional investigations? One reason may be that the current hearing process makes it difficult or impossible for ORI, institutions, or individuals to prove scientific misconduct. The hearing process has been criticized by discouraged whistleblowers who believe that their allegations of scientific misconduct should have been upheld, and by the accused for the expensive and protracted nature of the proceedings. The following article examines problems in the scientific misconduct hearing process and suggests that the process could be improved by letting administrative law judges, patent attorneys, and a scientific majority decide these cases.

Integrity in Research Publishing and Professional Accountability

Robert B. Laughlin’s gross extrapolation (Physics Today, December 2002, page 10) from a single incident at Bell Labs—the first in its 77-year history—to an indictment of the whole of industry research is wrong on every plane.The assertion that scientific misconduct in industry research is not only more frequent than in publicly funded research but indeed common is unsubstantiated by the essay. In fact, that comment is directly at odds with the results of investigations by those agencies that oversee federally funded research. The Office of Research Integrity, which oversees research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and related agencies, has gathered some revealing statistics from annual reports on possible research misconduct during the six-year period 1991–96. Universities, both public and private, constitute 26.5% of those entities that answer to ORI, yet they account for 68% of the institutions at which misconduct was found. Small businesses, on the other hand, make up 43% of those institutions that answer to ORI but only 4.9% of the misconduct findings. The office of NSF’s inspector general publishes a semiannual report of shenanigans by its grantees. According to the reports of the past few years, almost all misconduct findings were in universities—though it should be noted that most NSF grants go to university research.I’d like to see the statistics for grant falsifications for all federally sponsored research. I strongly suspect they too would refute Laughlin’s thesis. The “inherent truthfulness” of university research doesn’t explain why the overwhelming majority of research misconduct findings occur at universities and not in industry labs. In light of the facts, is Laughlin willing to admit that some fraction of the university-style research portfolio that he is so proud of is “simply lies” as he callously characterized industry research?I’ve worked in both environments, and the pressure to fudge both data and dollars is as easy to understand in an academic environment as in an industrial one. “Publish or perish,” the law of the land in academia, translates to “patent or perish” in industry. But a private company faces a much more punishing feedback mechanism—namely, bankruptcy—to ensure accountability than any public enterprise. When a private company gets caught defrauding the taxpayers, there are unanimous calls for retribution. But such brutal accountability is hard to find in the public sphere. A tenured professor can be convicted and imprisoned for falsifying grants, get out of jail, and return to his or her old job. Does anyone expect Jan Hendrik Schön to ever work at Bell Labs again?The notion that the products of industry research remain cloaked in secrecy is false. They are usually submitted for public scrutiny in the form of a patent application. Every such application includes a full disclosure of the technology involved and any discoveries that led to it. Anyone can read it, learn from it, and build upon that knowledge. Trade secrets are a rarity in industry because they are so hard to keep. Most industry leaders recognize the importance of open lines of inquiry and only clamp down when they are close to something patentable.The idea that secrecy breeds impropriety is absurd. A secret that is untrue is a worthless secret. And a patent based on such information isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. The “rottenness” of any fraudulent research in industry does not “take an extremely long time to reveal itself”—investors tend to be an impatient and shortsighted lot. Even if the work should somehow lead to production, products that don’t work don’t sell terribly well. And it is not at all clear how a company’s shoddy research might “clog the pipeline of innovation,” especially if that research is being done in secret. Did all semiconductor research grind to a halt when Bell Labs thought it had a transistor without avalanche breakdown? Schön and company published their phony results and others tried and failed to reproduce them. It remains for Laughlin to prove that the whole corrective process took longer at Bell Labs than it would have in a university lab. Remember, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann “discovered” cold fusion in a university lab.The “fiery independence” of university researchers receives praise from Laughlin, but few individuals possess the fiery independence of an entrepreneur. Revenues from patents offer universities some genuine independence by relieving them of at least some fundraising burden.The claim that science is driven by selfless altruism is nonsense. We do it because it’s fun—a distinctly selfish motivation. And never discount the value of simple greed. Greed is a terrific source of motivation, and far more reliable than altruism.Bottom line: The decision to do something dishonest is a personal one and is more indicative of a character flaw than the avarice or altruism of one’s employer. Honest, productive research can thrive in either industry or university environments. There are good arguments for supporting university research. Laughlin’s isn’t one of them.© 2003 American Institute of Physics.