Academia urged to tighten reins on fraud
Toronto doctor says it’s time to lock up research miscreants
A leading Toronto doctor has reignited debate over research fraud saying doctors and academics who fudge and fabricate data should be locked up.
Research misconduct can have “huge” impacts, and “it is time to regard such behaviour in the same category as criminal fraud and deal with it accordingly,” Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, co-director of the Centre for Global Child Health at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, argues in an article published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.
While not everyone agrees, Bhutta says criminalization would deter deliberate research fraud, which is “prevalent” and doing “incalculable” harm.
He notes how the “fraudulent and discredited” work of British researcher Andrew Wakefield has undermined public trust in vaccines around the world. Wakefield was found to have falsified data in a study that linked autism to the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and was barred from practising medicine in the U.K. because of his misconduct.
“Yet he lives a free man in Texas, raking in money from various support groups,” says Bhutta.
Drug companies and their researchers have been fined for manipulating data in some high-profile cases, but Bhutta says “the code of conduct for investigating and tackling flagrant research fraud” in the academic world is much less clear.
“In most instances institutions and academic bodies do not follow up on alleged or proved wrongdoing with criminal proceedings,” says Bhutta. And even when perpetrators are caught, some of them “claw their way back to active research.”
He points to Korea’s Hwang Woo-suk, who was forced to resign as a professor at Seoul National University after his “landmark” papers on stem cells were found to be fraudulent. Woo-suk has returned to “scientific life” and “written more than 100 scientific publications since his fall from grace in 2006, 40 in the past two years alone.”
Bhutta says research fraud should be treated no differently than financial and health-care fraud.
“In cases where deliberate research fraud is proved after thorough investigation, additional deterrence through punitive measures such as criminal proceedings should be added to the repertoire of measures available.”
Surveys have found two per cent of all scientists admit to falsifying, fabricating or modifying data at least once, and much of the misconduct is believed to be fuelled by pressure to publish and produce highimpact results. Uncovering misconduct is “all too dependent” on chance detection and whistleblowers, says Bhutta.
Dr. Julian Crane, director of a medical research group at the University of Otago in New Zealand, is not convinced calling in the police would “more satisfactorily uncover misconduct or prevent harm.”
He says the responsibility should stay with research organizations to reduce misconduct and investigate allegations.
“Criminalizing research misconduct is a sad, bad, even mad idea that will only undermine the trust that is an essential component of research and requires good governance not criminal investigators,” Crane argues in an article published beside Bhutta’s piece. “It is surely not beyond the expertise of research organizations and their staff to reduce opportunities for misconduct.”
Canada has its share of scientific fraudsters, but universities and research councils often refuse to discuss the cases or reveal the names of the researchers involved, even after their misconduct has been substantiated.