How to deal with illegal actions in research: the survey revealed obvious disagreements

Data seekers and research integrity officers have different views on how to deal with accusations of offenses in science.

A survey of scientific detectives and honesty staff in research institutions shows that the two groups disagree on how to deal with serious cases of improper research, such as data production, image manipulation and plagiarism.

The results reported in a preprint published on Zenodo last month reflect the ongoing tensions between detectives who detect and report potential violations of research integrity in scientific literature - often anonymously, to Public Forums such as PubPeer, and integrity officers who are responsible for investigating and responding to allegations of misconduct in their institutions. The two groups had different views on whether universities can honestly investigate their own researchers and what actions should be taken if misconduct is detected.

"We lack a system to work with messages from individuals or groups that have done improper research, which at the moment is really poorly processed and processed, as a rule, very special," says Dorothy Bishop, a honesty detective and retired psychologist from the University of Oxford, UK, who conducted the survey.

She hopes that these results will launch a dialogue between detectives and research integrity staff, which will help establish "recommendations on the optimal system to combat fraud in research".

Fight against misconduct

The survey included responses from 79 participants, including 36 sytheks, 22 institutional research integrity officers and 21 journal researchers and editors. Most of them were from Europe. In her preprint, Bishop said that there is broad agreement between detectives and research integrity officers that pressure on publication can stimulate questionable practices, and that institutions should take action when serious misconduct is detected.

However, there were also clear disagreements. Slightly less than 6% of siks agreed that the current channels of reporting on illegal actions are effective, compared to 77% of employees on the integrity of research. In free comments, some detective respondents said that, in their opinion, institutional investigations of potential misconduct are too slow or are hindered by conflicts of interest.

About 64% of research integrity staff said that the best way to solve problems with allegations of wrongdoing is a self-regulation model in which institutions investigate their own researchers and decide on any sanctions. Only 28% of syks agreed with this (see "Different views").

"If one of the leading researchers of the institute is accused of serious improper research, you will have a very controversial situation where the institute can try to protect them," says Rene Vodoley, a researcher and neurosurgeon at the University of Radbud Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who took part in the survey. He adds that frustration is growing in the slay community, where many people feel that the "obvious" cases they report do not lead to quick action.

Three quarters of detectives and 59% of integrity research staff thought it would be useful to have an external regulator that can handle allegations of wrongdoing at the national level, that operates independently of the government to reduce the risk of political influence. Such bodies exist in some countries, but their roles and responsibilities differ, notes Bert Segers, president of the European Network of Research Integrity Offices in Brussels. For example, in Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium, a national authority may consider institutional investigations, while in Sweden and Denmark, public institutions consider allegations of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism. But even in these systems, only institutions can impose sanctions against researchers, adds Segers, who took part in the survey.

Slow investigations

Another area in which detectives and employees had different views on honesty was how to handle documents that were marked as suspicious. Approximately 81% of detectives believed that documents with serious problems that undermine the credibility of the conclusions should be quickly withdrawn without waiting for an institutional investigation. "We have to act a little faster than now," says Aquarius.

But only about 55% of employees agreed in terms of honesty. "The retreat should be "as soon as possible", but also "as justified as possible", since you do not want to withdraw something where correction may be enough," says Segers.

Institutional investigations often take months because the academic committees involved have tight schedules and meet monthly, which slows down the process, he adds. "This discrepancy paves the way for the study of the desirability of the "fast way" among the investigations of misconduct for cases that can justify a quick retreat at first glance."

Detectives and research integrity officers also disagree on what institutions should do when researchers are found to have committed misconduct. Eighty-six percent of honesty employees said that people who have committed serious misconduct in the field of research should undergo "retraining", but only 33% of detectives agreed.

Segers with sytovs about this. "There are much more effective ways to prevent repeated serious misconduct by the same people than informing or retraining," he says. Aquarius believes that institutions should consider limiting the responsibilities of such people, for example, by prohibiting them from monitoring graduate students or applying for grants.

"It's hard that we know which areas are problematic, because we have to find an agreement so that we can work on problems together," says Aquarius. "There are many possible explanations for how these differences arise," he adds, but "we need to find tangible solutions where both satisfying people and people who are not useful in the field of research should find a common language."