Friday 15 September, 2000
Science Fact or Fraud?
One of the corner stones of science is honesty amongst its practitioners. If scientists could not trust each other to report the results of their work honestly then the whole basis of research would crumble. As a result the scientific community is, by and large, very honest and falsifying research is one of the most serious forms of misconduct.
One of the best-attended sessions at the Annual Festival of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was a debate on whistle blowing in science. What should a researcher do if they discover when someone is lying about their work? Toby Murcott of BBC Science reports.
The theory is that all research is and should be under open scrutiny for any other scientist to challenge and question, but that is not always the case in practice. One person who did blow the whistle and report what he saw as dishonest practices was Dr Andy Millar. He was the Director of Clinical Research with a small but growing biotechnology company called British Biotech. He was worried about some clinical drug trials the company was conducting - and he said so publicly:
‘I finished up being fired, there was a media war for six weeks when the company attempted and succeeded to a large extent in discrediting me and rubbishing [sic] my professional reputation. The company sued me for breach of confidence and professional misconduct and in the end I won if there is a winner in litigation.’
| ‘Scientists should be free to talk openly about any fraud and misconduct they encounter’ | |
Whistleblowers Handbook
Millar’s experience was not unique. Professor Brian Martin, of the University of Wollongong Australia, has been researching scientific dissent for 20 years and has just completed The Whistleblowers Handbook.
‘The experience we have, just talking to so many whistle blowers, is that they go to what you can call various official channels such as internal grievance procedures or ombudsman or the courts and it is very predictable that they just don't work.’
Traditionally anyone working for a business has been treated harshly for giving away what the organisation might see as company secrets. On the other hand, universities have been seen as places where genuinely independent academic research is pursued, with no loyalties except to the truth. But, Professor Steven Rose is worried that this is no longer the case:
‘Well I think there is a very real problem from the point of view of university research in the way that private companies have entered the university, both with direct companies in the universities and with contracts to university researchers. So that in fact the whole climate of what might be open and independent scientific research has disappeared, the old idea that universities were a place of independence has gone. Instead of which one's got secrecy, one's got patents, one's got contracts and one's got shareholders.’
So how deep are the levels of fraud and misconduct? Brian Martin believes it’s widespread:
‘It's unbelievable. If you go into any organisation and start asking around you find all sorts of corruption and various misdeeds. So there are definitely things that need to be spoken or things that need to be done to fix problems whether it's corruption or harassment or actually very deep seated problems of the way society is going.’
| 'I am a scientist, trust me' | |
Guidelines
Many research organisations now require researchers to follow specific guidelines. The British Medical Research Council for example has just published a Guide on the Principles of Good Research Practice.
At the Annual Festival of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the overwhelming feeling was that scientists should be free to talk openly about any fraud and misconduct they encounter. The scientists there were deeply concerned that unless research was seen to be honest then an already sceptical public would lose faith in the value of scientific research - a concern echoed by Steven Rose:
‘A lot of the mistrust is caused by scepticism by the public who understand very well that scientists are speaking from industry, with shares, from government and so on, they have their own interest to protect. The public understands this and it’s high time I think that we understood it as scientists ourselves and stopped harking back to the suggestion that we could be trusted just because we say, "I am a scientist, trust me.”’
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| Fraudulent Science |
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Any year, something like ten million scientific papers are published; only a handful are likely to be tainted. But scientists are growing more concerned about the problems that do show up, and uncovering more in the process.
In the US, the mammoth National Institutes of Health set up an Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which received a thousand allegations of misconduct over five years. Of those, 150 were investigated. And in half of those, the office found against the researchers.
But many scientists are worried about the bureaucratic practices creeping into the whole business of fraud busting. And the literature is littered with contested decisions.
In the end it is not clear that judicial processes will always help decide scientific matters. All scientists will agree that the true court of science is the real world. But nature is often reluctant to reveal its secrets. And scientists are fallible human beings, so that even honest researchers can become deluded or misinterpret data. And research is often politically highly charged, so that wishful thinking and hard evidence become irredeemably entangled. In one sense, the shadow cast by fraudulent science, helps illuminate by contrast what is good about science at its best. |
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