POLITICS:In a startling 2005 US study a third of US scientists admitted to engaging in unethical research behaviour, writes DICK AHLSTROM

ARE WE CHEATERS? Do we take a chance hoping not to get caught and then keep the head down once we get away with it? I am not talking about dodgy expenses here, or the odd thing left off your tax returns. This is about misconduct in scientific research.

We don’t have high profile examples of it here, but clearly something untoward is happening under the surface. Or perhaps people are becoming more fearful of it given the substantial flow of State funding into our laboratories.

Why else would some of our most important national bodies come together to discuss the issue and put together a set of recommendations on how to maintain “research integrity”? Representatives of the Health Research Board, Irish Universities Association, Higher Education Authority, Science Foundation Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy participated in a workshop at the academy on September 24th last year. They wanted to develop “a national approach to the promotion of research integrity and the effective and fair investigation of research misconduct allegations”.

The workshop agreed to set up a working group, which spent the past year preparing a clear and comprehensive view of what might be done to help protect Ireland’s research reputation abroad. The meeting was not prompted by any known incidents of misconduct here, the Royal Irish Academy’s president Nicholas Canny said last month when the document went live on the academy’s website.

Rather, those involved in the conduct of science here “had an awareness” of high profile examples from abroad. “No Irish examples were cited. We were satisfied there had been no major case here,” he said.

The participants certainly had in mind the case of Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean researcher who, on the back of falsified data, made claims of remarkable achievements in human cloning. The fiasco caused tremendous damage. It destroyed his own reputation, despite important previous work. It harmed his institute’s and South Korea’s reputation and cast a pall over cloning research in general.

Then there was the startling 2005 US study in which a third of US scientists admitted to engaging in unethical research behaviour. More than 15 per cent of respondents admitted to changing scientific methods and results in response to pressure from research funders.These high-profile failures prompted many countries to begin introducing controls, guidelines to maintain research integrity, but Ireland was doing nothing.

Prof Canny credited the Health Research Board’s Dr Maura Hiney with being the inspiration behind the meeting and subsequent report. Its authors examined best practice abroad and came up with definitions for what constituted fraud and misconduct.

More importantly the report lays down guidelines for how to investigate claims of misconduct. This is vital. Research misdeeds seldom fall into the category of criminal conduct. Yet making such a claim and investigating it raises the risk of wrongly damaging a person’s reputation – ending up in a High Court battle over defamation.

Prof Canny was also adamant about the need to have safeguards for any “whistleblowers” who might come forward with claims of misconduct. You can picture the hapless PhD student or postdoctoral research fellow watching their senior professor tinkering with results or discarding unhelpful findings. What percentage is there for them in letting officials know that wrongdoing has occurred? If the professor goes, so do the lower research posts and, in today’s climate, the likely outcome would be a position abroad.

International studies have indicated that the most common causes of misconduct were performance related – led by competition for money and research space. You have to get your work into important publications to enhance your reputation and, hopefully, money and senior research posts will follow. If you don’t make the grade, your services will no longer be required – or at least the better jobs, as senior lecturer or professor, will no longer be available to you.

Our researchers are under those kinds of pressures now too. State subvention for third level, where most of the research happens, has never been lower. Research funders have seen their budgets trimmed so there is less money to go around. And the Government is piling on the pressure across the board to get research findings commercialised.

There has probably never been a better time for the research community to see the introduction of a national approach to research integrity, if only to provide protection for those who do the right thing.