Transcript Scientific Misconduct Investigations are rare

Scientific Misconduct
Scientific Misconduct Definition
"Misconduct in Research" means 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.
It does not include honest error or honest differences
in interpretations or judgments of data. (Source: U.S.
Public Health Service Regulations).
Scientific Misconduct Definition
• Fabrication – making it up
• Falsification – changing the true description
• Plagiarism – taking the words and ideas of others without
citation
• Other practices that seriously deviate from those that are
commonly accepted within the scientific community
proposing, conducting, or reporting research.
• Grants
– Preliminary data (what is this)
• Lab notebooks, other research records
– What was done, how, when, results,
conclusions
• Papers, posters, abstracts, talks, lab
meetings
The Cost of Scientific Misconduct
• Damage to others
– the integrity of scientific knowledge
– non-productive lines of enquiry based on false information
– the reputation of colleagues co-authors, collaborators, and
institutions
– waste of financial resources to investigate/repeat
– Loss of confidence in the public
• Damage to self
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Loss of reputation
Loss of funding
Loss of career
Loss of job
Resources about scientific misconduct
Baylor
Committee on Scientific Integrity
– Dr. David Nelson, Chair
National
AAMC - Beyond the Framework
http://www.aamc.org/research/miscon/contents.htm
Government
Office of Research Integrity (ORI)
http://ori.dhhs.gov/
Scientific Misconduct Investigations are rare
4,060 institutions
2001
# of
Institutions
reporting
misconduct
78
# of
New
Cases
Opened
72
Fabrication and Falsification are the most common
charges
Types of Misconduct and Total Number of New Allegations Reported
2001
Fabrication
37
Falsification Plagiarism
46
17
Other
27
Total
127
Process for Scientific Misconduct Investigations
Findings
&
Sanctions
Allegations
Committee on
Scientific
Integrity
Inquiry
Investigation
Departmental
Appeals
Board
President
Appeal
HSS
Office of Research
Integrity
Independent
Review
Most Inquiries do not lead to investigations
Number of Inquiries and Investigations Conducted in Response to New
Allegations,
2001
Inquiries
67
Investigations
20
There are few findings of scientific misconduct each
year
2001
ORI cases opened
35
ORI cases closed
25
Avg Time
14.6 months
Misconduct Found
14
The PHS found that XXXX, graduate student, SLU Graduate School, engaged in scientific
misconduct by falsifying and fabricating data in research supported by National Institute of
General Medical Sciences. From October 1999 through January 2001, he falsified and
fabricated data in his research notebook and produced false films and graphs of purported
experiments to produce data for his thesis and misrepresent his progress. Mr. XXX
reported the falsified and fabricated data in: (1) laboratory group meetings; (2) a poster
presentation at the American Society for Cell Biology meeting in December 2000; and (3) a
draft manuscript that he was preparing. Mr. XXX also provided falsified data to his mentor,
who unknowingly included it in a draft of a grant application. Given the extensive nature of
Mr. XXX data falsification and fabrication, none of his research after July 2000 can be
considered reliable. His actions adversely and materially affected the laboratory's ongoing
research by creating uncertainty about all his experimental results, necessitating
verification and repetition of experiments, preventing the reporting of results for publication,
and preventing the principal investigator from submitting a competitive renewal application
for a NIH grant. Mr. XXX entered into a Voluntary Exclusion Agreement in which he
voluntarily agreed for a 3-year period to exclude himself from any contracting,
subcontracting, or involvement in grants and cooperative agreements with the U.S.
Government, and to exclude himself from serving in any advisory capacity to PHS.
YYY, Ph.D., engaged in scientific misconduct by falsifying and fabricating data in research
supported by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He falsified Figure 6.2
of his Ph.D. thesis by adding discrete bands where there actually had only been a uniform
smear of radioactivity, the effect suggesting an unobserved result, which was, therefore,
falsified; the falsified image was not published. Dr. YYY committed additional scientific
misconduct while a postdoctoral research fellow. Dr. YYY falsified values in Table 1 of
supplemental web material that accompanied the paper in Science. In Table 1, Dr. YYY
misrepresented that lymphocytes from mice transgenic for ribonuclease H underwent
significantly lower rates of isotope switching, when the actual data showed no such
difference for IgG1, IgG2b, and IgE isotope classes. Dr. YYY also falsified Figures 2 and 4
of the supplemental web material published with the Science paper in that the results were
not representative of multiple independent experiments as he claimed. In addition, Dr. YYY
falsified Figure 2C of the Science paper, which represented a crucial control to establish his
claim that RNA/DNA hybrids were limited to immunoglobulin switch regions, by publishing a
blot that was not representative of his overall results. He also falsified Figures 4 and 7 of a
second paper (EMBO J.) using the PhotoShop computer program to move bands or
regions of a lane vertically relative to the rest of the gel, thus falsifying the size of molecules
described in the paper. Dr. YYY and his coauthors retracted both papers.
Dr. YYY entered into a Voluntary Exclusion Agreement in which he voluntarily agreed for 4
years beginning May 1, 2002, to exclude himself from any contracting, subcontracting, or
involvement in grants and cooperative agreements with the U.S. Government, and to
exclude himself from serving in any advisory capacity to PHS.
A Recent example of a scientific misconduct
investigation at Baylor
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Seven Committee members, administrative assistant, secretarial
support, legal assistance
Five grant applications and five published papers
Nine separate “issues” grouped by scientific relationships
Found scientific misconduct in seven, no misconduct in two
48 separate instances of FFP
Report of 540 pages + separate book of figures
Institutional Appeal
ORI Appeal
DAB Hearing
Civil Lawsuit
Seven YEARS
Whistleblowers
(1) whistleblowers are free to disclose lawfully whatever information supports a reasonable
belief of research misconduct as it is defined by PHS policy,
(2) institutions have a duty not to tolerate or engage in retaliation against good-faith
whistleblowers,
(3) institutions have a duty to provide fair and objective procedures for examining and
resolving complaints, disputes and allegations of research misconduct,
(4) institutions have a duty to follow procedures that are not tainted by partiality arising
from personal or institutional conflict of interest or other sources of bias,
(5) institutions have a duty to elicit and evaluate fully and objectively information about
concerns raised by whistleblower,
(6) institutions have a duty to handle cases involving alleged research misconduct as
expeditiously as possible without compromising responsible resolutions, and
(7) at the conclusion of proceedings, institutions have a responsibility to credit promptly, in
public or private as appropriate, those whose allegations are substantiated
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