commentary
Expressing a consensus on candour
If governments are to define deception as research misconduct, science
deserves clarity and rigour in the definition.
Louis M. Guenin
Is there a problem about misconduct in
research? When this question first received
widespread attention in the United States a
decade ago, many would have understood it
as a query about the frequency of misdeeds.
As university and government investigations
have since become routine, some of the pub-
lic’s fears about the incidence of infractions
have been eased. But it happens that govern-
ments have not settled upon a rigorous defi-
nition of wrongdoing.
What is “misconduct”? A definition
recently published for comment by the White
House Office of Science and Technology Poli-
cy (OSTP) has returned this question to cen-
tre stage. On the premise that science deserves
the best of scientific, moral and legal thinking
combined, I propose here a different defini-
tion — one that not only avoids counter-
examples to which OSTP’s well-intentioned
proposal succumbs, but that sounds, in the
most fundamental notions of right and
wrong, pertinent to the experimental setting.
The imagined drama
As some would have it, OSTP opens a new act
in a drama featuring science as agonist, law as
antagonist. The plot begins about ten years
ago as aliens invade Scientia. The aliens are
legislators, lawyers and bureaucrats whose
avowed mission is to expel dissemblers.
Scientists immediately protest that prevari-
cators are rare and that Scientia deserves
home rule. To allay native fears, the aliens
announce a “collegial” investigatory process.
But the natives soon learn that under this
scheme, the alien prosecutor is also the
judge, and the judge conducts no trials.
In act II, some convicted scientists obtain
hearings before a higher alien authority. To
everyone’s surprise, the reviewing tribunal
acquits one accused after another. Few read
the tribunal’s lengthy opinions, but reports
put down the acquittals to prosecutorial
incompetence. Taking a longer view, native
observers whimsically dubbed “fraudians”
doubt whether an alien tribunal can under-
stand Scientia. In act III, frustrated alien
prosecutors attempt to dragoon the natives
into fewer hearings. Meanwhile alien leaders
decide to solicit native views about miscon-
duct. Fraudians organize a competition to
select that acceptable definition of miscon-
duct containing the fewest alien legalisms.
Many committees submit brief definitions,
but each entry is either too vague or suc-
cumbs to counter-examples, and none gains
NATURE | VOL 402 | 9 DECEMBER 1999 | www.nature.com
acceptance in Scientia. As act IV opens, the
fraudians have scanned OSTP’s entry and
awarded it an impressively low legalism score.
But soon counter-examples appear. In the
definition derby, there has yet to be a winner.
This drama accentuates the influence of a
perception of science and law at loggerheads.
To be sure, the law often mangles the very
notion of science. As we encounter the US
Supreme Court defining science, we can
only despair to read one account (Sir Karl
Popper’s) unwittingly adopted as if there
were no rival1. But in respect of misconduct
cases, two observations are telling. First, the
seldom-read opinions of the government’s
reviewing tribunal reveal earnest study
of pertinent science, cogent reasoning
and painstaking appraisal of conflicting
evidence. Opinions in the most publicized
cases — like Thereza Imanishi-Kari’s, almost
all acquittals — encourage the belief that
this panel can capably adjudicate charges of
wrongdoing2. Many more cases have ended
in admissions of guilt.
Second, in the throes of scruples about
language, it has escaped notice that a consen-
sus obtains among scientists about what
conduct is misconduct. Consider how rarely
scientists disagree, in respect of untruthful-
ness, about a statement of the form “Act a by S
was wrong”. Fraudians have been unable to
find any category of conduct that one thinks
wrong and another innocent. But by dint of
antixenophonia — avoidance of a foreign
tongue — the definition derby has yielded
only imprecise sketches of what constitutes
misconduct.
By unshackling the linguistic tools with
which we have learnt to express norms of
conduct, we might capture this scientific con-
sensus. I take as my task to bag that quarry. A
search for norms can be understood as an
exercise in hypothesis formation. The data
consist of our judgements about what is right
and wrong. We test a hypothesis to see if it
explains and correctly predicts those judge-
ments. If a draft norm condemns an action
that a scientific consensus absolves, or vice
versa, we reject the norm, draft another, and
test the new one.
A
bsence of a clear
definition has
impeded effective
oversight and policies.
© 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd
Groping for norms of candour
“Integrity”, despite early institutionalization
in “Office of Research Integrity” (ORI), is not
the root notion here. Integrity is variously
understood as a set of virtuous dispositions
or, after integer or “whole”, as the attribute of
so adhering to a set of commitments as to
keep oneself intact. The pivotal concept here
is candour, the attribute on a given occasion
of not uttering anything that one believes
false or misleading. We describe breaches
of candour as deception. The government
might reasonably assert that one who stoops
to deception in quest of distinction betrays
such lack of distinction that further support
would waste public funds3. An incident of
self-promoting deception might also be
viewed as a selective disadvantage reliably
predicting failure in grant competition. Since
1987 the US government, followed recently
by European bodies, has prohibited “fabrica-
tion, falsification, and plagiarism”. Despite
the non-moral senses of “fabrication” (as
synonym of “construction”) and “falsifi-
cation” (as antonym of “verification”),
the regulations toss off the foregoing
offences without definition. They then add
another, “serious deviation” from “accepted
practices”.
A National Academy of Sciences panel
observed early on that “absence of a clear,
explicit definition ... has impeded develop-
ment of effective institutional oversight
and government policies and procedures”4.
Although we inherit a storehouse of philo-
sophical and legal machinery bearing on
breaches of candour, two reasons have been
urged for shunning it. First, it is suggested
that such machinery will not work for the lab-
oratory and that scientists would not readily
comprehend it anyway. In fact, scientists have
criticized the sketchy misconduct texts of the
past decade as vague and overreaching; mis-
representation of material facts, to take the
most nuanced of norms about candour, is
understood even in the rough-and-tumble
world of finance. Everyone prefers clarity to
opacity, brevity to verbosity. Beyond that,
one can say little about our storehouse’s tools
until we experiment with them.
The second contention is that moral and
legal phraseology may impede ethics educa-
tion. If this is not self-contradictory, it is a
canard. Few of us learn that to burgle we must
break and enter a domicile at night with
intent to commit a felony; we all learn that we
should never invade another’s property. We
usually do not learn morals from law books.
When seeking to stimulate thinking by young
577
commentary
scientists, instructors select provocative dis-
cussions, not rules. What is in play is clarity.
Litigants would seem no better served by
norms eschewing legal distinctions than
would patients by physicians’ orders eschew-
ing medical distinctions.
Nuance unbound
OSTP proposes to prohibit and define fabri-
cation, falsification and plagiarism, and sur-
prisingly enough to convert departure from
“accepted practices” from a sufficient to a nec-
essary condition of misconduct5. This seems
aimed at consensus wrongs, but antixeno-
phonia has exacted a toll in precision.
OSTP renders fabrication as “making up
results and recording or reporting them”. This
metaphor leaves the shop sense of fabrication
to differ from the regulatory only insofar as
“making” differs from “making up”. That puts
a big load on a little adverb. OSTP goes on to
define falsification as “manipulating research
materials, equipment, or processes, or chang-
ing or omitting data or results such that the
research is not accurately represented in the
research record”. Suppose that Jeeves deliber-
ately misstates an experimental step. (A prin-
cipal charge in one publicized case was fail-
ure to disclose pooling of patient samples.)
According to OSTP’s text, because Jeeves has
not misstated or omitted either “data” or
“results”, no misconduct occurs. The same
result follows if Jeeves deliberately misstates
the value of a physical constant or signs a
patent application asserting a falsehood. The
cure for under-inclusiveness here does not lie
in expanding the notion of “the research
record”, for OSTP the crux. For any academic
discipline, it is mistaken to suppose that
deception relates peculiarly to the record,
esteemed though it be. OSTP, for example,
would appropriately capture deception in
oral presentations. What is fundamentally
wrong about deception is harm to others, not
to a medium. We need to specify the activity in
the course of which harm by self-promoting
deception should be forbidden. That activity
we familiarly call “the conduct of research”.
Rigour here is also simplicity. “Fabrica-
tion” and “falsification” are indirect ways of
expressing misrepresentation. As it happens,
our richest source of experiential guidance
devolves from disclosure requirements of the
federal securities laws6, thousands of judicial
encounters with which have exposed many
nuances of reliance on written communica-
tions. An investigator induces and betrays a
listener’s trust by signalling “I believe it” while
believing a false utterance false or a misleading
omission misleading. This understanding
defines misrepresentation in the conduct of
research (see box above). Here we imagine no
access to private mental states, only inferences
from behaviour.
OSTP would instead capture conduct
committed “intentionally, or knowingly, or in
reckless disregard of accepted practices”. The
578
To capture a consensus
Research Misconduct Defined. It shall constitute research misconduct for an investigator in the conduct of
research to commit misrepresentation, plagiarism, or misuse of another’s work.
● The conduct of research ● A fact is material if it or its believing the utterance false, or
consists in (i) any inquiry funded contrary affects the plausibility, (ii) while believing the effect
by federal funds, or (ii) the replicability, execution, or effect misleading, omits a material
preparation or communication on safety of a result, hypothesis, fact without which the utterance
related to any such inquiry of or procedure, or is such that it is misleading.
(a) a document published or would be rational for others to
provided to another, including alter their course of conduct in ● Plagiarism is the intentional
any government agency, reliance upon it. presentation of the words of
institution of higher education, another as the presenter’s own.
research institution, or ● Misrepresentation occurs if
professional organization, or and only if an investigator, ● Misuse of another’s work is
(b) a formal oral presentation. intentionally or recklessly the intentional presentation as
indicating belief in the the presenter’s own, without
● An investigator is a person investigator’s utterance, attribution appropriate for the
who participates in the conduct (i) delivers a false utterance medium, of the ideas or work of
of research. concerning a material fact while another.
council of the National Academy of Sciences in transcription of words), this text exonerates
has opposed offences predicated on reckless- plagiarists who copy without appropriating
ness7. OSTP’s phrase may reflect a consensus and convicts non-deceptive patent infringers
to sanction some recklessness, but it encom- who appropriate without copying. OSTP
passes too much. For any first author, a paper’s would absolve copying that is not a “serious
every sentence is doubtless intentional. OSTP departure”, but our considered understand-
would exclude “honest error”, but that contra- ing of plagiarism is unqualified (we do not
dicts the condemnation of recklessness and condone “a little plagiarism”). OSTP anom-
begs for a definition of “honest”. That returns alously condemns “reckless plagiarism”. And
us to the key tests for culpability — what the its mention of work confidentially reviewed
investigator intentionally or recklessly indi- may suggest freedom to copy work otherwise
cates and what he believes. reviewed10. Review ought not to be men-
Deceptive omissions have long been tioned: copying is the wrong, regardless of
recognized as wrongful. To show that an source. We need precisely to define plagiarism
omission renders “the research” not “accu- and misuse of another’s work (see box). If
rately represented”, as OSTP imagines, one Jeeves copies by unattributed paraphrase
must show the omission misleading. The rather than verbatim transcription, Jeeves
word “material”, a threshold already observed may commit misuse.
by ORI8, forestalls prosecution of peccadil- In the norms of misrepresentation,
loes. In the Imanishi-Kari case, it was held plagiarism, and misuse of another’s work, we
that alleged wrongdoing about the “January would appear to have the simplest hypothesis
fusion” data concerned a “trivial” matter9. We explaining our considered moral judgements.
may define “material” for the experimental In time their etymologies may seem no more
setting (see box). OSTP would instead say alien than those of “science” and our many
that “a significant departure from accepted other borrowings from the ancients. ■
practices of the scientific community for Louis M. Guenin is in the Department of
maintaining the integrity of the research Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard
record” is a necessary condition for finding Medical School, 200 Longwood Ave, Boston,
misconduct. This recrudescence of the Massachusetts 02115, USA.
“deviation” phrase is vague and — like a track e-mail: guenin@hms.harvard.edu
umpire ranking pole-vaulters by technique Further commentary on the author’s and OSTP’s
instead of height vaulted — adverts to method proposals may be found at
when results control. When Amelie’s paper http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dms/cos/guenin.html
omits the data from a botched experiment, 1. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 113 S. Ct. 2786 (1993).
we do not vindicate Amelie by conjuring 2. Guenin, L. M. & Davis, B. D. Sci. Eng. Ethics 2, 47–54 (1996).
“accepted practices” for “maintaining integri- 3. Guenin, L. M. Acad. Med. 71, 595–603 (1996).
4. National Academy of Sciences. Responsible Science (National
ty of the research record”; we observe that the Academy Press, Washington DC, 1992).
discarded data are immaterial in the context. 5. 64 Fed. Reg. 55723 (14 Oct. 1999).
OSTP renders “plagiarism” as “the appro- 6. Rule 10b-5 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 17 C.F.R.
§ 240.10b-5.
priation of another person’s ideas, processes, 7. Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Letter to William
results, or words without giving appropriate Raub, 15 March 1996.
credit, including those obtained through 8. 60 Fed. Reg. 10588 (27 Feb. 1995).
9. In re Imanishi-Kari, Department of Health and Human Services,
confidential review of others’ research pro-
Departmental Appeals Board, Research Integrity Adjudications
posals and manuscripts”. Apart from doing Panel, Decision No. 1582 (1996).
violence to “plagiarism” (which consists only 10. Guenin, L. M. Science 271, 1790 (1996).
© 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd NATURE | VOL 402 | 9 DECEMBER 1999 | www.nature.com