The Origin of the Modern Research Misconduct System

Abstract

By the mid-1980s, Congress had become convinced that legislation was needed to address scientific fraud. Ironically, no case would show that more clearly than the Baltimore case, which erupted at nearly the same time as the initial legislation calling for all federal agencies that manage research to formulate new research misconduct policies. The Baltimore case involved the Secret Service, the nascent Office of Research Integrity, and Congressional hearings and was highly publicized. The respondent, Dr. Baltimore’s collaborator, was found to have committed research misconduct, but that finding was overturned on appeal. Many scientists sided with Baltimore in calling the case an example of government overreach. Clearly, the research misconduct regulations written subsequently, with input from many scientists, reflected the concern for possible prosecutions of scientists based on politically or economically motivated allegations. However, those who wrote the regulations did not contemplate how they would work if the scientist respondents were the ones who were threatening disruptive legal action and violating confidentiality. The safeguards for the informant were minimal. In the end, the greatest flaw was that universities were put in charge of investigating their own faculty.

“During the past two decades, the process of professional self-regulation in the scientific community has been seriously questioned by the lay public in general and Congress in particular. Congressional concern about failures in self-regulation are manifested in their establishment of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Inspector General and the Public Health Service’s National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Scientific Integrity to investigate and sanction scientific wrongdoing.”

Braxton and Baird “Preparation for Professional Self-Regulation”

Science and Engineering Ethics, 2001, 7, 593