The community will self-correct, right?

Many of us in science can give anecdotal accounts of professional deception but we generally say nothing, which would imply that fraud is culturally tolerated.  Some argue that the community will self-regulate, that eventually the perpetrator will be discovered and taken care of in time.  This is sadly true only for the most blatant of cases and has validity only if the perpetrator is both caught and the deception openly acknowledged (as well as dealt with effectively).  Relying on self-regulation to police fraudulent behavior is dangerous, as not only will most fraud thus go unaccounted for but the damage to the victim(s) never gets acknowledged; this amounts to institutionalized self-deception.  Perhaps for some "self-regulation" is code for dealing with the problem discretely but when fraud extends to false-representation of a colleague, covertly "taking care of things" without hearing from the other side can all too quickly lead to an academic lynching, which is generally the outcome for most things in life when the court of public opinion decides our fate. 

Hidden cost of fraud

Even when fraud is somewhat transparent (as in the case of Scott Reuben) it may take a great deal of time before the deception is revealed (12 years in this case, and it's anyone's guess just how many other careers were adversely affected in that time).  From the point of view of a junior scientist struggling to make the transition to mid-level and beyond, it is disheartening to realize that a willingness to admit the flaws of your own research can frequently "invite" reviewer skepticism, whereas the same red flags are kept down (sometimes by the same reviewers or reviewing body) even when willful misrepresentation is more than just apparent.  When fraud goes unchecked this way, those that live by the Honor Code can be cheated out of career-defining opportunities.  In contrast, those that practice deception gain much coveted “credibility” and “expertise” through a series of well-received papers and/or long-term funding.  Once embedded as "solid citizens" of the science community, there’s no telling what such fraudulent people will do when they are elevated to positions of influence and power.  What is more likely, that they will switch to more ethically-driven behavior after they’ve made it or continue to use the same tactics that got them there in first place?  Whereas the immediate damage caused by blatant fraud can be cleaned up with surprising efficiency, it’s the micro-frauds that pose the bigger problem because these “lesser” corruptions are rarely reported (or may go unpunished even when they are), and their toxic effects can thus pollute the science community for many years thereafter, without anyone ever really knowing why. 

Peer Review: is it fatally flawed?

We are all overworked when it comes to reviewing the research of other investigators, so it is likely that peer-review will simply not catch all troubling inconsistencies, especially when they may be spread out across a series of papers.  Still, how often have you said (or heard a colleague say) “How on earth did that get past the reviewers?”.  How often have you been a reviewer of a manuscript and spotted serious conceptual flaws, alarming methodological problems or addled-mindedness about the design, only for the editor to completely over-ride your recommendation (to significantly revise or reject the paper) and instead accept the manuscript essentially unchanged?  Clearly peer-review can be circumvented through editorial discretion.  Such discretion may be necessary if a reviewer’s critique is excessive or over-exuberant, or if the subject matter has high importance, regardless of whether or not the usual criteria have been fully met.  However, when such discretion borders on nepotism, the peer-review process becomes nothing more than a checked box in an online survey. 

Then there's the flip side to being a reviewer, when your manuscripts or grant applications come back rejected but the comments are so terse or vague, so fundamentally flawed that it is clear the review was poor at best.  There's usually no recourse after such reviews, you just have to try someplace else.  This process isn't helped at all when 6-12 months later the same study with the same findings is published by a rival group.  It's getting increasingly harder to be original in our research but if we all knew without any doubt who reviewed our work, then the threshold for intellectual theft (blatant or subtle, direct or indirect) would be raised sufficiently that the cost/benefit ratio would favor more collegiate behavior.

     

Does the current “Peer Review” system invite deception?

As long as publications and grant support are used as critical benchmarks for career progress, the peer review system will remain vulnerable to fraud.  There has to be a better system that can assess the quality (or veracity) of a given body of work without career success being tied to the outcome of the review.  Perhaps academic institutes can play an active role here by not making this the bottom line in assessing faculty progress.  Regardless, there is growing dissatisfaction with this system and the emergence of online “open access” models suggest something better is on the horizon though for some it may not arrive soon enough.  At the moment it appears we are stuck with the classic peer-review system because, much like democracy, it may not always be pretty but what else is there?

Perhaps total transparency would be a better way around this problem, as reviewers might be less tolerant of “author inconsistencies” if their professional reputation was irrevocably tied to open access of their expert opinions.  Yes, there is the argument that a lack of anonymity would undermine the peer-review process (reviewers would be concerned about retribution, amongst many other things) but the current system is clearly flawed.  Indeed the current system will only ever work the way it was intended to when we are all willing to embrace the same ethical standards, and there's no way to know if this is so in a closed system.

Did Reuben fail Science or did Science fail itself?

In a recent article by Adam Marcus, Josephine Johnston (an attorney specializing in research integrity) was asked her opinion about the Reuben fraud: "It’s usually just one article, not a body of work,” Ms. Johnston said.  “What’s particularly surprising given the dimensions of the case, is that Dr. Reuben’s research managed to raise no alarms among reviewers”. She added, “.....the peer review system can only do so much. Trust is a major component of the academic world.  It’s backed up by the implication that your reputation will be destroyed if you violate that trust.”  Expressing surprise that no alarms were raised illustrates why the peer-review system needs to change: we trust it too much yet that trust is violated a lot more than either most are aware or would care to admit.  Whether peer-review just needs tinkering (additional criteria need to be added) or whether it needs radical restructuring (far greater transparency, as well as full accountability on the part of the reviewers) is an issue that should be more aggressively discussed. 

Fraud of the highest order - should a doctoral degree ever be rescinded?

In one of the more spectacular of cases of fraud (see Jan Hendrick Schõn), malfeasance was discovered by scientists doing what they are trained to do: be skeptical.  Although this took some time, the perpetrator was found out and publically humiliated.  For some this was enough, but others felt that Schõn’s PhD should be taken away from him.  Some argue that this was neither appropriate nor necessary, as he would eventually be severely dealt with by the science community.  This may be so in Schõn’s case as, excluding lost time and resources for his competitors, his fraudulent behavior hurt only him (though some of his (ex)-colleagues, his alma mater and the journal Nature might think differently).

By necessity these days, most research is conducted as a team but, by mere proximity alone, careers can be compromised or ruined because a given research group did not realize they were working with a less-than-honorable colleague.    The argument that Science will look after itself  is based on the assumption that the community would have eventually discovered Schõn's fraud and self-corrected.  Really though, it was readers of already-published papers that  caught his deception, not the peer review system.  Some would argue that this is evidence that peer review continues post-publication but had the deception been more subtle would he ever have been found out?  Which kind of begs the question: how many other Schõn's are there out in the community that will never be discovered?

Closing Statement

Career development in the sciences is based on fractions these days, and most of us are generally as good as each other.  So to stand out you need an edge and fraud (subtle or blatant) can give unscrupulous people a huge strategic advantage.  We CAN fix the problem of professional malfeasance, but much like Wall Street, we may have to suffer catastrophic collapse before we realize we should have done something years ago.

Christopher Turner, PhD

Neuroscientist & Assistant Professor

    

Convergence

Scientific Fraud and Peer Review

Scientific fraud and career development

For a number of reasons, most junior scientists tend not to make it to the next level.  While many accept their fate gracefully, others are too easily tempted to “create their own luck”.  Fraud, by whatever means, can give an individual a huge advantage over those playing by the rules.  Whereas this is true for all professions it is especially so for Science, a profession where trust is the universal currency.  Whereas the more blatant forms of fraud (such as data fabrication) can cause considerable harm, the more subtle forms of scientific deception (false claims of authorship, intellectual theft and shameless self-promotion, for example) can be just as damaging.  Indeed, careers can be helped or harmed in ways that have little to do with data misrepresentation.  Just how many of these micro-frauds exist in science is anyone’s guess because they are much harder to challenge and they too easily acquire authenticity with the passage of time.  Once time has erased all doubts about the integrity of any given career path, awkward questions either no longer get asked or are deflected away by collective forgetfulness or diminished motivation to revisit the past.