Should it? Im hesitant, because of the risk of catching those who did not actually do wrong. Why should research misconduct be illegal? After 30 years of observing how science deals with the problem, I have sadly come to the conclusion that it should be a crime, for three main reasons. First, in a lot of cases, people have been given substantial grants to do honest research, so it really is no different from financial fraud or theft. Second, we have a whole criminal justice system that is in the business of gathering and weighing evidence—which universities and other employers of researchers are not very good at. And finally, science itself has failed to deal adequately with research misconduct. How can we recognize honest mistakes? Its quite difficult. Clearly not every minor misconduct should be regarded as a crime. And, as with all laws, it will take time to establish what merits prosecution and what can be dealt with by a reprimand. But we know peer review doesn’t detect all misconduct. If research seems wrong or impossible, we start with the assumption that it’s just an honest mistake and then look into it. You can sometimes detect fraud statistically, because if you invent data you tend to come up with a recurrent pattern. But in most cases, it is detected because somebody blows a whistle.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 16:53:31 +0000