Integrity in Scientific Research: Creating an Environment That Promotes Responsible Conduct (2002)

Read the report by the National Academy of Sciences.

"Many people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character." -- Albert Einstein

Summary:

Integrity in Scientific Research attempts to define and describe those elements that encourage individuals involved with scientific research to act with integrity.

Recognizing the inconsistency of human behavior, it stresses the important role that research institutions play in providing an integrity--rich environment, citing the need for institutions to provide staff with training and education, policies and procedures, and tools and support systems. It identifies practices that characterize integrity in such areas as peer review and research on human subjects and weighs the strengths and limitations of self--evaluation efforts by these institutions. In addition, it details an approach to promoting integrity during the education of researchers, including how to develop an effective curriculum. Providing a framework for research and educational institutions, this important book will be essential for anyone concerned about ethics in the scientific community.

Note especially the definition of scientific integrity at an individual and at an institutional level.

Does the Star System Lead Scientists in Some Developing Countries into Grave Misconduct?
An article in today's Washington Post ("Deception by Researchers Relatively Rare" by Rick Weiss) points out that last year, 265 allegations came in to the ORI, but only a small fraction led to findings of actual misconduct.

Although the number of allegations has grown in recent years, no one knows whether the actual prevalence of misconduct has changed much. Less than one-quarter of the allegations ORI receives advance to formal inquiries, and the office makes fewer than a dozen findings of misconduct in a typical year. Many and perhaps most instances occur under the radar, Pascal (Chris Pascal, director ORI) and others acknowledge. Among them may be some of the many cases that are reported but go uninvestigated because they fall outside ORI's jurisdiction, which is limited to science supported by public health service funds. (Other offices, including one at the National Science Foundation, cover other realms of federal science but handle far fewer cases than ORI.)

(I suppose that the NSF office is the Office of Investigations).

The article includes a discussion of the case of South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk who is accused of research falsification with regard to his stem cell research:

Several scientists and ethicists said it is becoming clear that, if anything, Hwang Woo Suk was a rather typical faker. What made the case big was not the scope or creativeness of his lies, but the extremely high profile of the scientific field in which he chose to perpetrate his charade.

Despite all the recent hand-wringing, there may be precious few new lessons to be learned from the Korean debacle, several experts said. Even the journal editors who promised to beef up their screening of submitted manuscripts say privately they doubt there is a practical way to intercept the small proportion of scientists determined to cheat.

I note, however, that the Hwang case, and that of Abdul Quadeer Khan in Pakistan raise an issue about the effect of the lionization of some scientists in some developing nations. In contrast to the United States and other scientifically developed nations that have taken steps to assure scientific integrity, developing nations often have weakly institutionalized scientific regulatory systems. (For example a recent survey by the WHO Regional Committee for Africa indicated that 36 percent of the repondent countries did not have Research Ethics Committees.)

As David Dickson suggested ("Stem-cell research must keep its house in order" in SciDev.Net, 28 November 2005)

The downfall of South Korea's leading stem cell scientist says more about the pressures on modern researchers than it does about the ethics of the research involved. But the two remain linked......two important sets of pressures link these aspects, and need to be addressed by everyone concerned about responsible scientific conduct. The first are the pressures on individual researchers due to the highly competitive nature of much modern science. The second are parallel pressures caused by globalisation.

Similarly (in "Scientists caught in a 'crisis of objectives'" by T. V. Padma, SciDev.Net, 6 January 2006): :

Swiss Nobel laureate Richard Ernst has urged governments and research institutions not to push scientists to produce "glamorous" results that could lead them to do sloppy work or breach research ethics. Ernst, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1991, made the comments while referring to the recent scandal surrounding results obtained by South Korean researcher Hwang Woo Suk of the Seoul National University

53-year-old scientist Hwang Woo Suk was once regarded as a hero in South Korea for bringing the country to the global forefront of stem-cell and cloning studies. He was a member of a panel on science and technology advising the South Korean president between 2001 and 2004 and was awarded the country's top science prize in 2004. The South Korean government promoted Dr. Hwang as a national hero and an international celebrity. Peoples Daily Online reports:

Like a film or singer superstar, Hwang's name appeared in local media very often in the past two years.....In 1987, he became a SNU professor and started his hard research work with working 17-18 hours a day and only four hours sleeping. After years of such intensive researchs, he made South Korea's first test-tube cow in 1993.....His team hit headlines of international media after its paper on cloning the world's first embryonic stem cell line published in February 2004 in journal of Science.

He was appointed head of the World Stem Cell Hub in Seoul. Even after his disgrace, as TMCNet reported on December 24, 2005:

Hwang's online support community "I love Hwang Woo-suk" showed their unwavering support for the professor. They plan to hold meetings with candlelight tonight near the Chonggyechon stream in central Seoul and other major cities to show their support.

William Langewiesche writes (in "The Point of No Return", The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2006 - subscription required)

By 1990 the mastermind behind Pakistan's nuclear bombs, Dr. Abdul Quadeer Khan, was living flamboyantly in Islamabad—indulged by Pakistan's military and civilian leaders; adored by the masses; ensconced in a multitude of luxurious houses; surrounded by bodyguards and sycophants; writing checks to schools, charities, and mosques; lecturing; and continuing to lead the large government laboratory that carried his name, in nearby Kahuta......Particularly since the successful showdown with India three years earlier, during which both Khan and the Pakistani president were alleged to have threatened their Hindu neighbors with annihilation, Khan had been freed from the need to be discreet. In public he had assumed the role he believed he deserved, no longer of just another refugee from the Partition, or of an arriviste in a land of the poor, but, rather, of Khan the Magnificent, a "brilliant scientist" who was wise and progressive, a patriot, and, indeed, the savior of Pakistan. Moreover, all Pakistan seemed to agree.

Khan is accused of having transferred the technology of atomic weapons to a number of governments of nations that would seem to pose a real threat.

Both Hwang and Khan were accorded star status in their countries, and both were under great pressure to succeed in order to enhance the prestige of their nations. Would others indulge in misconduct under similar circumstances? The quotation with which I began this posting, by a scientist who clearly achieved star status himself, is pertinent. A man of truely good character would not. But the Romans had a preventive process:

In imperial times the conqueror was crowned with a laurel wreath and wore a purple tunic (!) embroidered with palms under a purple toga embroidered with stars. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace-horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown over his head, and whispering in his ear a warning that all glory's fleeting.

Perhaps the global scientific community too requires such a process to keep scientist's head's straight when they achieve star status, or lest they long too much to become stars!

Steps Forward

More seriously, I give very high priority to strengthening capacity in developing nations to assure the confiability of scientific and technological publications, and indeed to strengthening the capacity to encourage and assure ethical conduct of scientists, engineers, and others in the science-based professions. Use of the book that is cited in the beginning of this posting is a step in the right direction.

The Office of Research Integrity of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has a very good website on activity worldwide related to the protection of scientific integrity. The Fogerty International Center at the U.S. National Institutes of Health also has a useful website on International Research Bioethics Initiatives.

SciDev.Net has a Dossier on Ethics of Research, with policy briefs on key issues as well as news and editorial content on the topic as it pertains to developing nations. The Hastings Center, in addition to its online publications on bioethics, has a good has a good set of links on international ethics resources. There is even a journal, Developing World Bioethics.

The Wellcome Trust publishes its Guidelines on Good Research Practice, as well as a dossier of publications on research ethics; it also has an interesting website describing its approach to research ethics in developing nations, and giving some useful links.

An importand player in this field is the United Nations Educational, Scientific Cultural and Cultural Organization. UNESCO operates a program titled "Ethics of Science and Technology". The program was created in 1998 with the establishment of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) and has been a priority of UNESCO since 2002. It aims to promote consideration of science and technology in an ethical framework by initiating and supporting the process of democratic norm building. The Program is organized into three main areas of action:

* Standard-setting
* Capacity building
* Awareness raising

Currently, UNESCO is drafting studies on the feasibility of elaborating universal declarations on the ethics of outer space and on the ethics of the environment as well as that of elaborating an internationally applicable code of conduct for scientists.

The World Health Organization also carries out an Ethics Program. While WHO is concerned generally with the ethics of health and health service provision, it has specific interests in the ethics of biomedical research, Among its efforts is the publication of "Operational guidelines for ethics committees that review biomedical research".

There are of course many other efforts at building capacity to deal with issues of scientific ethics in developing nations. Thus SIDCER is a global network dedicated to developing ethical review for the promotion of ethical and scientific values in biomedical research'. The African Malaria Network Trust, for example, has conducted training workshops, such as one on Protection of Human Research Participants held 29-31 August 2005, Dar es salaam, Tanzania.

In conclusion, let me just suggest that the strengthening of developing nation capacity in the area of scientific ethics is an important, and indeed urgent task. It warrents support.