We recently reported that the number of retractions in scientific journals has been rising rapidly the last few years. According to June’s Harper’s Index, there were only three retractions in such journals in 2009. By 2011, that number had risen to 180 retractions per year.
We wondered if scientific research was getting less honest.
Our friends at Retraction Watch (RW) wondered the same thing. On July 16, RW’s Ivan Oransky, M.D., published a story titled: “How Can Institutions Prevent Scientific Misconduct?”.
Retraction Watch regularly reports on retractions published in scientific journals. We are honored to be able to present them to our readers with permission from Retraction Watch. Retraction Watch was started in 2010 by Oranksy and Adam Marcus.
Profiles of Misconduct
Oransky wrote that the increasing rate of retractions, with some “fraudsters” even setting new records, was focusing attention on how institutions can prevent misconduct. Oransky pointed to Columbia University’s Donald Kornfeld’s review of 146 U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) cases from 1992 to 2003.
Here’s what Oransky said Kornfeld found about those accused of misconduct, reported last month in the journal, Academic Medicine:
“Approximately one-third of the respondents (the accused) were support staff, one-third were postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, and one-third were faculty. Accusations of fabrication represented 45% of the offenses, falsification 66%, and plagiarism 12%. The first two offenses frequently occurred together.Approximately three-quarters of the respondents admitted their guilt or did not provide a defense. None claimed that the offense of which they were accused should not be considered research misconduct. They frequently attributed their behavior to extenuating circumstances.”
Examples of extenuating circumstances included:
A technician had been assigned responsibility for more protocols than he could reasonably have been expected to perform.
One respondent acknowledged that he had falsified data “to make it fit the hypothesis.” He had recently been notified that he was to be terminated and believed that he needed additional publishable research to get another appointment.
Another respondent acknowledged that she had fabricated data in an article which had been accepted for publication. She stated that she had been under pressure from a superior to generate data and felt that her action was justifiable because she had observed a senior scientist in her laboratory “clean up” data to make them more acceptable for publication.
Causes of Misconduct
Oransky reports that Kornfeld’s analysis doesn’t exclusively blame “bad apples, ” nor does it only blame “a system.” Instead, it’s a combination:
“These acts of research misconduct seemed to be the result of the interaction of psychological traits and/or states and the circumstances in which these individuals found themselves, ” concluded Kornfeld.
Kornfeld further concludes that his findings mean that federally mandated Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training may not be doing very much. But says Kornfeld, such efforts still have a place:
“RCR instruction cannot be expected to establish basic ethical standards in a classroom of young adult graduate students. However, variations on such a course might be effective for the nonprofessional staff, for whom such training is not now required.
Members of this group might be less likely to fabricate or falsify data if they have a better understanding of the goals of the research in which they are involved. They should know how their findings could contribute to advances in science and/or improved medical care and the serious consequences of publishing fraudulent data.”
Remedies and Suggestions
Kornfeld continues:
“However, establishing remedies for the psychological characteristics and the life circumstances of potential respondents poses a much more difficult problem. Grandiosity, perfectionism, and sociopathy cannot be eradicated from the scientific community, or any other, and little can be done to reduce the reality of the need to publish or perish.”
Kornfeld offers some suggestions:
Improvement in the quality of mentoring in training programs, and
Establishment of a policy that acknowledges the important contributions of whistleblowers and establishes truly effective means of protecting them from retaliation.
Oransky said he was particularly happy with the second suggestion, given that the FDA, as OTW reported earlier, is apparently spying on its scientists.
More Resources Needed
Retraction Watch also wanted to know what Ferric Fang, the editor of Infection and Immunity who has been very outspoken about misconduct in science, thought of Kornfeld’s suggestions.
“This is an interesting contribution to the literature on research misconduct, although attempts to obtain a psychological profile of scientists who have committed fraud are not new, nor are the author’s findings, as he acknowledges, particularly surprising. His recommendations to improve mentoring and protect whistleblowers are certainly reasonable and might help to deter or identify some instances of misconduct, but these are also not new.”
For Fang, writes Oransky, preventing misconduct will require better funding:
“Like many others, the author [Kornfeld] simply accepts the stresses of the current research environment as a given: ‘little can be done to reduce the reality of the need to publish or perish.’ Here, to a certain extent, I disagree.
As the author himself acknowledges, science today is inadequately supported, resulting in a ‘heightened competition for…limited dollars.’ This has not always been the case, and I don’t think this situation should be accepted as inevitable in the future. Adequate resources to support the scientific enterprise would not only reduce incentives for misconduct but improve the lives of all scientists and allow them to spend more of their time searching for answers to research questions instead of funds. This is not going to be easy, but probably more realistic than trying to eradicate ‘grandiosity, perfectionism and sociopathy…from the scientific community!’”
As Kornfeld and Fang note, the need to publish and the grandiosity to be seen as the “one to trust” is a powerful driver that can push some researchers into misconduct. We don’t know how to eradicate misconduct, but along with our friends at Retraction Watch, we’ll be there to report when misconduct occurs.
