It has been observed that integrity and ethics in research and publication are often compromised. The initiative as I have come know is the most appropriate, deserving and timely.
This exciting new initiative strikes me as much needed! It's quite a shame that the HHS’s Office of Research Integrity only prosecutes 5-10 cases per year to completion. Prior to 2021 they only prosecuted 1-2 cases per year! (https://ori.hhs.gov/content/case_summary)
No. ORI's cases that are old disappear from the website onces the sanctions period is over. The caseload and findings haven't changed that much except when there was turmoil at the top. The accurate way to check is via the Federal Register. ORI findings stay forever there.
Very Good Point, Theresa! An easier way is to look for ORI's annual reports, if you can still find them on their website. In my yrs as an ORI investigator (1993-2013), being government, we never threw anything out.
I sure hope it somehow also protects whistleblowers from not being hired anymore by institutions down the road of their career paths (Haven't checked the CSLDG climate fund). I am sure this will help a lot though for the first years though. Great effort!
I just retired from a social science department. What I personally notice is mostly "cutting corners," either to save time (and write more papers), or to encourage results in a particular direction. Of course there may be plenty of more serious fraud going on. It's just harder to find without deliberately searching for it, while cutting corners is quite easy to spot.
Cutting corners is one cause of the crisis of non-replicable results in so many fields. For example, why bother to check your software carefully, once you have the results you expected to see? One result is a huge number of errors in software (including spreadsheets) that are used to calculate research results. Then if someone else tries to replicate a result that was based on buggy software, they won't be able to.
Unfortunately, the academic publish or perish pressure, and the growing tendency to just count papers (without regard to quality) when making promotion decisions mean that this problem won't get better. Rbohn@ucsd
Have you considered approaching universities with an offer to fund one or more tenured positions, open only to applicants who have blown the whistle on fraud in published research? Or considered seeking a donor to fund one or more such positions?
Once the positions exist, the university could then promote the positions (and new achievements by their holders) to additional donors who are savvy about the replication crisis - and perhaps reluctant to donate to universities in general for that reason. (Think Emergent Ventures, and other people with values along the lines of Progress Studies.) This is one way to get administrators on your side.
The existence of tenured positions for whistle-blowers, and increased donations from additional donors who specifically like this idea, would then be your wedge to normalize whistle-blowing in hiring/tenure/promotion decisions at an increasing number of universities. Basically, encouraging decision-makers as equivalent to publishing a paper.
Eventually, you could compile and publish a ranking of universities or individual departments, in the same sort of format as FIRE's. In other words, a shaming of laggards to join the positive incentive of increased funding. But you probably want some universities on-side first, before even considering using public shame.
If one is going to reward whistle-blowing, there should also be some consideration of how to identify fraudulent whistle-blowing, e.g. sabotaging a colleague's data analysis to later blow the whistle on it.
All institutional recipients of Public Health Service funding (e.g, NIH) have to have a research integrity officer (RIO), and yes, these are advertised.
Article ready to submit on fraud 45 years ago in ideological opposition to a physical therapy procedure. Submitted conference presentation proposal on same in May. The authors attenuated the distribution in order to achieve desired failure in small trial.
It has been observed that integrity and ethics in research and publication are often compromised. The initiative as I have come know is the most appropriate, deserving and timely.
This exciting new initiative strikes me as much needed! It's quite a shame that the HHS’s Office of Research Integrity only prosecutes 5-10 cases per year to completion. Prior to 2021 they only prosecuted 1-2 cases per year! (https://ori.hhs.gov/content/case_summary)
No. ORI's cases that are old disappear from the website onces the sanctions period is over. The caseload and findings haven't changed that much except when there was turmoil at the top. The accurate way to check is via the Federal Register. ORI findings stay forever there.
Very Good Point, Theresa! An easier way is to look for ORI's annual reports, if you can still find them on their website. In my yrs as an ORI investigator (1993-2013), being government, we never threw anything out.
I sure hope it somehow also protects whistleblowers from not being hired anymore by institutions down the road of their career paths (Haven't checked the CSLDG climate fund). I am sure this will help a lot though for the first years though. Great effort!
I just retired from a social science department. What I personally notice is mostly "cutting corners," either to save time (and write more papers), or to encourage results in a particular direction. Of course there may be plenty of more serious fraud going on. It's just harder to find without deliberately searching for it, while cutting corners is quite easy to spot.
Cutting corners is one cause of the crisis of non-replicable results in so many fields. For example, why bother to check your software carefully, once you have the results you expected to see? One result is a huge number of errors in software (including spreadsheets) that are used to calculate research results. Then if someone else tries to replicate a result that was based on buggy software, they won't be able to.
Unfortunately, the academic publish or perish pressure, and the growing tendency to just count papers (without regard to quality) when making promotion decisions mean that this problem won't get better. Rbohn@ucsd
Bravo! Much needed.
I would like to suggest a fourth tactic.
Have you considered approaching universities with an offer to fund one or more tenured positions, open only to applicants who have blown the whistle on fraud in published research? Or considered seeking a donor to fund one or more such positions?
Once the positions exist, the university could then promote the positions (and new achievements by their holders) to additional donors who are savvy about the replication crisis - and perhaps reluctant to donate to universities in general for that reason. (Think Emergent Ventures, and other people with values along the lines of Progress Studies.) This is one way to get administrators on your side.
The existence of tenured positions for whistle-blowers, and increased donations from additional donors who specifically like this idea, would then be your wedge to normalize whistle-blowing in hiring/tenure/promotion decisions at an increasing number of universities. Basically, encouraging decision-makers as equivalent to publishing a paper.
Eventually, you could compile and publish a ranking of universities or individual departments, in the same sort of format as FIRE's. In other words, a shaming of laggards to join the positive incentive of increased funding. But you probably want some universities on-side first, before even considering using public shame.
If one is going to reward whistle-blowing, there should also be some consideration of how to identify fraudulent whistle-blowing, e.g. sabotaging a colleague's data analysis to later blow the whistle on it.
All institutional recipients of Public Health Service funding (e.g, NIH) have to have a research integrity officer (RIO), and yes, these are advertised.
Great initiative, Stuart! This deserves sustaining support.
FROM: lpalmer@winona.edu
Article ready to submit on fraud 45 years ago in ideological opposition to a physical therapy procedure. Submitted conference presentation proposal on same in May. The authors attenuated the distribution in order to achieve desired failure in small trial.