The anti-fraud counselor

For anything good to come out of fraud cases, we should ask ourselves what we, as individual researchers and as an academic community, can do to avoid similar instances of scientific dishonesty occurring in future. Jan Lipfert believes the answer is to be found on several levels.

2011 Had a remarkable series of cases of scientific fraud. In Germany, a widely publized case came to light last March, when Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, at the time Germany’s Minister of Defense and widely considered a likely heir to Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, resigned when instances of plagiarism were found in over 90% of the pages of his PhD thesis. The scandal has even given the German language a new verb: ‘guttenbergen’, or ‘to shamelessly copy’.
The Netherlands had its own set of scientific scandals in 2011. Perhaps most notably the case of Diederik Stapel, who lost his job as professor and dean of social psychology at the University of Tilburg, when it emerged that he had made up data on a large scale. In another prominent fraud case, Don Polderman, a cardiologist, was fired from his job as professor at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam for falsifying data and for failing to obtain patient consent for medical procedures.
For anything good to (possibly) come out of these cases, we should ask ourselves what we, as individual researchers and as an academic community, can do to avoid similar instances of scientific dishonesty occurring in future. I believe the answer is to be found on several levels. First, on an individual level, as researchers we must keep scientific integrity in highest regard. The search for truth is at the heart of the scientific enterprise. However, this is not enough. Second, on the level of research groups and departments, we must strive to create an environment of open discussion, free exchange and good scientific practice. I believe that such an environment is the best safeguard against scientific fraud. Third, on the departmental and university level, we need clear rules and competent structures to appropriately address (possible) cases of scientific misconduct. While reporting on high profile fraud cases tends to emphasize the ‘moral’ failure of the individual researcher, I feel that it is as important to draw lessons about the desirable research environment and the organizational framework for handling allegations of fraud.
In the case of Diederik Stapel, it turns out that in the past several students had already raised concerns about the integrity of his scientific methods, but these concerns were not acted upon. One concrete lesson would be to have an ‘ombudsperson’ or confidential counselor who could be approached with suspicions of scientific misconduct. In my opinion, this person should be i) impartial, ii) confidential, iii) easy to find, and iv) approachable. In Tilburg, the confidential counselor was the Rector Magnificus himself - hardly someone who is easy to
approach for a student or post doc.
TU Delft has recently published a ‘Code of Ethics’, which I find quite disappointing in this regard. While the topic of whistleblowing is explicitly addressed (section 3.2.8.), it says very little of substance about what to do if one encounters (suspected) scientific misconduct. The document explicitly refers to ‘TU Delft Regulations for Whistle Blowing’ that are nowhere to be found – at least not by searching the university’s website or the internet. This suggests to me that at TU Delft, like at many other universities, there is still work to be done to create an infrastructure for effectively addressing scientific misconduct.

Dr. Jan Lipfert, Post doc and Veni fellow, Department of Bionanoscience, Faculty of Applied Sciences.

See the ‘Interim Report Regarding the Breach of Scientific Integrity Committed by Prof. D.A. Stapel’
www.tilburguniversity.edu/nl/nieuws-en-agenda/commissie-levelt/interim-report.pdf