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The pathology of research fraud: the history and politics of the US experience

Like the proverbial elephant examined by blind men, the subject of research fraud can evoke radically different interpretations, depending on one’s occupational, disciplinary. or national perspective. To scientists outside the United States, for example, the spectacle of such an international luminary as David Baltimore being dragged through journalistic muck and accused of unethical research conduct by Washington legislators must seem ludicrous, just another idiosyncrasy of the culture that produced Hemingway and Madonna. Manhattan and Disneyland. Sometimes I envy my European colleagues who can be amused at ‘human ’ failings yet move swiftly and pragmatically to prevent future failure, future pain. In the US, research fraud is addressed only in sombre tones and there is perhaps good reason for seriousness. Research fraud is very much a governmental concern, a matter of politics not science. The consequences of allegation, investigation, and conviction are no laughing matter. However, that seriousness may also mask embarrassment at how the issue was handled when it first arose. Thanks to a scientific leadership that reacted by denouncing well-meaning questions as ‘anti-science’ and dismissing politicians’ inquiries as ignorant and irrelevant. academic researchers in all disciplinesfrom biology, physics, and chemistry to anthropology, sociology. and psychology-must now conform to government regulations defining ethical standards throughout the research process, from proposal through to final publication. Increased layers of bureaucratic procedures extend the time and cost of investigations for all concerned (accused, accuser, colleagues. and investigators). Not even the most acclaimed Nobel laureate is exempt from, at one extreme, the embarrassment and inconvenience accompanying public accusations and, at the other, professional ruin if found guilty. The story of how US science arrived at this impasse poses useful lessons for all researchers, as well as questions about the uniqueness of the US experience. When lists of research fraud seem to be dominated by examples from the US, does that indicate flaws in the training, supervision, or standards for research in the US alone? Has controversy been exacerbated by a ‘witch-hunt’ mentality in US universities, or exaggerated by ambitious science journalists ? Are US researchers less moral than their counterparts in other countries, or has there been something in the system that encourages cheating and lying: perhaps too much money (and competition) in an expanding system or too little money (and stress) in a shrinking one? For some of these questions, no comprehensive data exist. There is, for example, insufficient psychological research on what compels bright, accomplished scientists to commit fraud in the first place. However, for the politics and sociology of the debate sufficient information exists to allow some explanations for the ‘pathology’ of the fraud issue in the US, suggesting just what went wrong, and why. Analysis reveals that, in fact, there was not one root cause but instead a complex interaction amongst the impulses of pathogenic individuals, environmental conditions that overemphasized ambition, competition, and publicity, and lax management of basic research in all parts of the system. This latter factor is crucial to understanding the US experience because it is linked to the ongoing ‘dance’ of democracy, the continual struggle to balance power between a nation’s chief executive and its legislature. The post World War I1 organization of basic research in the US proposed that managerial power for science should be shifted away from Washington. The leaders of the scientific community bargained not only for