On Research…

Sympathy ill-placed . . .

Last month, the publication The Scientist did something really weird. In its July issue, it devoted several pages and an editorial that, in effect, supported some researchers who had acknowledged their scientific misconduct.

The magazine story, “Life After Fraud,” detailed three cases where researchers recalled their experiences after being the focus of misconduct investigations by both the feds and their own institutions. One of the cases involved a respected Ohio State researcher, although the names in all three cases had been changed.

These vignettes, told largely from the researchers’ points of view, all explained that the individuals involved had signed voluntary agreements with the federal Office of Research Integrity acquiescing to the charges and agreeing to sanctions generally prohibiting their serving on review panels and receiving federal support for research, usually for a period of three years or less.

These findings were then reported in ORI’s own publications and on its website, as well as being cited in the Federal Register and other government publications. Those latter citations were the crux of these researchers’ statements that they were being victimized long after their penalty periods had expired, since the information was searchable on the internet.

The premise of the story was that these researcher’s admissions of misconduct, by signing the ORI agreements, were lifelong sentences since a simple internet search by potential employers routinely yielded details about their cases to anyone who was interested.

Sympathetically, the story suggested the consequences guilty researchers faced were too harsh.

Surprisingly, the magazine’s editor, Richard Gallagher, in an editorial flatly said that the punishments in these and other scientific cases were too harsh, and advocated a purging of the records after the short “sentences” ended. While one can applaud Gallagher’s sympathy and altruism towards these scholars, it seems odd that the boss for a publication claiming to be the “magazine for the life sciences” would so easily forego the traditional watchdog role that journalists routinely play.

But Gallagher writes: “It reminds me of the system present in US prisons, in which even after ‘serving their time,’ prisoners will still have trouble finding work because of their criminal records. But is it fair to compare felons to scientists who have, for instance, fudged their affiliations on a grant application when they were young and naïve?”

In fact, the rules and guidelines that govern oversight in cases of alleged scientific misconduct are extremely cautious and generous to those accused. The proceedings in these cases routinely extend for months, and in some cases years, before a finding is determined. The federal authorities rely on the accused’s institution, and therefore his/her peers, to investigate the allegations. Those investigations are staged in seriousness, based on the implications of the evidence, allowing accusations without merit to quickly crumble through lack of substance. And all such inquiries and investigations are kept secret until the point when a finding of misconduct is reached to protect the reputations of those who are subsequently cleared.

Information about the cases remains confidential until after an institution’s investigation has been completed and the findings are submitted to federal authorities for their concurrence. At that point, most researchers will have signed voluntary agreements agreeing to sanctions, as happened in the case of the scholars cited in this story.

What’s missing in Gallagher’s charitable stance is an acknowledgement of what the actual crime is – a breach of the public trust.

Our society has long-since agreed that people in certain roles may have a higher-than-normal obligation to the rest of us. Ministers must do no wrong. Lawyers and doctors have codes of conduct demanding professional behavior. Even journalists understand that a single incidence of plagiarism can cost them a career and embarrass them before tens of thousands of readers.

Why should researchers be held to a lower standard?

The truth is that scientific misconduct is an exceedingly rare event, and that rareness, in essence, is why when cases do occur they become such newsworthy episodes and remain in our collective electronic memory, the internet.

Few humans can say that they have never made a mistake, nor paid a price for it. As a society, we tend to be forgiving of those who admit their frailties and show remorse, and that’s as it should be. But scientific misconduct betrays both our trust and the culture of science itself.

Rules of behavior for researchers are clear for all to see. They just need to be followed.__Earle Holland

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Tags: Researchers, Science Communication, Science policy by earleholland
9 Comments »

We are what we read . . .

Nothing’s more pleasing to a writer than a note from a reader, especially one whose comment suggests an interest in dialogue. So when the following message came in, I figured it was good for our next offering:

Earle, I love to read your blog. Kind of a closet science junky…anyway, I wanted your take on something I saw on (a) political wire today:

“A new Pew Research report on American attitudes toward science finds that 55 percent of scientists identify as Democrats, while 32 percent identify as independents and just 6 percent say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81 percent identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12 percent who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.”

Will this affect the type of research being done? i.e.: Too much research on climate change simply to make a political point? Not enough scientific innovation into oil exploration as Democrats are politically against new drilling mostly? This could make for an interesting blog post.

The poll this reader was referencing was one of the latest from the Pew Research Center For The People & The Press entitled “Scientific Achievements Less Prominent Than a Decade Ago: Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media.” So while our questioning reader was focusing on the political orientation of scientists from this report, the actual study looked at much broader issues.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with any of us cherry-picking what interests us from a larger body of information. That’s simply human nature and it’s exacerbated by both the flood of information we encounter and the dwindling amount of time we have to spend on it – a point we’ve made in this blog a number of times before.

But things can get murky when you look a bit closer at what the reader referenced.

This latest Pew report runs more than 100 pages and covers topics such as the public’s and scientists’ views of the quality of American science, the interest of the public in scientific matters, science policy issues, funding and career paths for researchers.

The information on partisanship fills barely a single page.

And yet that was the direction that this reader’s attention was directed to by the “political wire” he referenced. Moreover, while the quote is an accurate lifting of verbiage within the report, it misses the point that of the scientists interviewed, almost one-third consider themselves as independents, meaning that they have no party affiliation or allegiance. And personally, adding in the “leanings,” as the report did, to establish Democratic or Republican preferences just seems a bit too speculative for my taste.

But the reader asked whether such partisanship would influence the type of research that’s being done, whether more climate change studies would be done to support a political view, or less oil exploration because of supposed Democratic opposition to that?

First off, I’ve never met a scientist who decided on a course of research because of political motivation – that simply doesn’t happen except for perhaps the rarest fraction of cases where a scientist’s intent is an aberration from the norm in research. People decide on what research to do based largely on the scientific questions they see as yet unanswered.

Secondly – and not to nitpick too much – oil exploration requires technology more than it does science. The techniques employed to locate potential new oil reserves are well-known and widely used. That’s not going to be affected much by the political interests of scientists, regardless of whether they lean to the right or left. All of this does, however, connect nicely to a sad conclusion derived from some Ohio State research we reported on recently. The gist of the study is summed up nicely in the story’s lede:

A new study provides some of the strongest evidence to date that Americans prefer to read political articles that agree with the opinions they already hold.

Researchers found that people spent 36 percent more time reading articles that agreed with their point of view than they did reading text that challenged their opinions.

As a people, we apparently now are fully accepting of limiting the information we encounter to that which reinforces our beliefs. And that’s a sorry state for Americans to be in. In one of the most-developed – if not THE most-developed – country in the world, we’re shying away from opposing views.

For scientists and researchers, whose worlds revolve around constantly increasing data, the public’s comfortable acquiescence with limiting their information seems appalling. More importantly, it will make bridging the gap between science and the public all the harder.__Earle Holland

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