Last month Bruce Lander, a former commissioner in the South Australian Independent Commission Against Corruption, called for the nation to create a watchdog agency separate from universities to look into cases of potential scientific misconduct.
He’d come to that conclusion after digging into the high-profile case of Mark Smyth, formerly of the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, which initially involved alleged delays and obfuscation by the institutions involved.
Others familiar with the abysmal record of Australian universities self-policing have been making these calls for some time. Far more scientific misconduct occurs than anyone is willing to admit, as we have argued. But just as scientists and universities elsewhere have pushed back — and continue to — against more oversight, Dr Cathy Foley, Australia’s chief scientist, says she is “not opposed to an integrity body, but I haven’t seen a sufficiently robust case yet”.
What Foley, who says she is “convinced that Australian research is overwhelmingly of high integrity”, would need in order to be swayed is unclear.
Australia is not the only country that — faced with growing awareness of scientific misconduct, particularly high-profile cases — has taken or has been considering taking steps toward independent oversight of fraud investigations. As of a decade ago, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, India, Norway, Poland and Sweden were among them, according to the Council of Science Editors.
One common theme is that even where national bodies have been established, scientists and universities have been successful over time in limiting the authority of such agencies, whether through political pressure or litigation. Those efforts often leave civil and criminal court judges — none of whom, by their own admission, are particularly well-suited to adjudicate issues of scientific integrity — to decide on sanctions and other measures.
In the United States, the Office of Research Integrity often is held up as a model of such government agencies. The ORI was created in the late 1980s as the Office of Scientific Integrity after — as is often the pattern — cases of misconduct that captured the attention of the public and elected officials. Its presence has no doubt created a framework for oversight as well as educational resources for research integrity.
However, often overlooked by people advocating for better oversight in other countries is that the statutes under which the ORI operates provide it authority only to supervise institutional investigations. The ORI — unlike its counterpart at the US National Science Foundation, an Office of Inspector General — lacks subpoena power. Its budget is in the millions of dollars, a rounding error against the tens of billions that the National Institutes of Health, whose funds are in its jurisdiction, spends each year. Much of the agency’s meagre power rests in enforcing the terms of the assurance agreements universities are required to sign in order to receive federal funding — but which some say give institutions wide latitude.
For these reasons and others, the ORI makes findings in only about a dozen cases a year on average, and of late has been embroiled in lengthy legal battles with researchers who hire attorneys to fight fiercely for their due process — while generally ignoring the scientific facts of a case.
The agency typically takes years to review cases and make findings. Worth noting: the ORI recently asked for public comment on its regulations as it considers changing them, and the Association of Research Integrity Officers, a trade group for institutional investigators, has urged it to limit the scope of required investigations.
None of this is an argument against an independent authority in Australia. Quite the opposite: self-regulation has failed around the world, and Australia is no exception. But it is a warning about how to move forward: be careful what you wish for, and be sure to erect safeguards to prevent those with a vested interest to whittle away authority.
