Managing allegations of research misconduct.

Abstract

If science is about the search for truth then dishonesty has to be the gravest sin, and a sin to which biomedical science is going to be particularly vulnerable because observations – if right – are not always replicable in the way they are in the physical sciences. Many of these issues were addressed in a brief report published by the Royal College of Physicians in 1991,1 but it was the publication of the subsequent book on ‘fraud and misconduct in biomedical research’ in 1993 that first brought the issue to the attention of a much wider audience. A new, fourth, and much revised, edition of this book appeared last year and a study of the way the book has evolved over time reveals much about the piecemeal and often rather unsatisfactory way the challenge has been addressed in the UK during the last 15 years.2