Safeguarding good scientific practice in Europe

Abstract

National governments invest in re‐search and development with the intention of creating new jobs and commodities and of stimulating economic growth. At the same time, science is becoming a truly global enterprise owing to the increased ease of international collaboration and communication between research groups and the global mobility of scientists themselves. The globalization of science and its growing economic importance underlines the need to establish and harmonize codes of good scientific practice and to regulate procedures for handling allegations of research misconduct. At the moment, however, it is the case that countries—and even different institutions in the same country—apply different standards and procedures to securing research integrity. > The globalization of science and its growing economic importance underlines the need to establish and harmonize codes of good scientific practice… This fragmented landscape of quality control is dissatisfying for all parties: the public, academic institutions and scientists themselves. In this regard, the USA has had a 20‐year head start: responding to widely publicized cases of research misconduct—namely fraud, falsification and plagiarism—US Congress created the Office of Scientific Integrity in 1989—now the Office of Research Integrity (ORI; Rockville, MD, USA)—to handle allegations of scientific misconduct in research that is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health. The US procedures stipulate that the ORI must assess investigative reports submitted by institutions and, through an oversight role, decide whether or not misconduct has occurred (www.ori.hhs.gov). In addition, scientific fraud and falsification in publicly funded research are taken more seriously in the USA; they are considered as misappropriation of federal funds, with fitting legal sanctions. Indeed, several US scientists who committed fraud and falsification were eventually sentenced to stiff fines and even jail terms (www.ori.hhs.gov/misconduct/cases). There is, of course, also a long history of allegations …