Scientific misconduct deserves more attention and better research committees

Misconduct is ever increasing with the increasing science industry. The spectrum of misconduct is large – as I explained some years ago with an extended version of the N-S-C Diagram. Unfortunately, protection of whistleblowers as well as quality of university investigations remain low (or are even suppressed for various reasons). This is also the view of a new Nature editorial “What Universities could learn from one of the biggest science’s fraud”

university investigations into research misconduct are often inadequate, opaque and poorly conducted. They challenge the idea that institutions can police themselves on research integrity and propose that there should be independent organizations to evaluate allegations of research fraud should.

I agree.

Too many research-misconduct investigations turn out to be inadequate or flawed, says Gunsalus, who had a hand in creating a 26-point checklist that university officials can use to guide probes into research misconduct, which Grey’s team used to rate the investigations.

The 2018 JAMA links to the checklist while the rights seems to be with the National Center for Professional & Research Ethics that has many more resources.