Journals, Institutions Need to Step Up More
Fraud may continue apace in part because investigations drag on for years, and in many cases, with a lack of consequences for the perpetrators, said the investigators. And, they say, journals and institutions haven’t devoted enough resources to prevent or investigate misconduct.
“A lot of editors did not even want to investigate because they just didn’t want to believe that there could be fraud in science,” said Dr. Bik of her experiences. “I hope that by now most journals at least should have realized that some proportion of the manuscripts that get sent to their journals is going to be fraud,” she said.
“The bulk of the journals seem like they don’t want to be bothered by this,” agreed Dr. Schrag, adding that “some have gone to great lengths to try to discourage people from bringing forward complaints.”
A big issue is that journals “don’t answer to any higher authority,” said Dr. Schrag. He believes that journals that repeatedly refuse to address integrity issues should be barred from publishing research produced with funds from the National Institutes of Health.
All the investigators said institutions and journals should hire forensic investigators. Relying on unpaid peer reviewers or editors to root out fraud is unrealistic, they said.
“You want to have specialized people with experience and be paid to do that as a full-time job,” said Dr. Bik, who is funded by speaking engagements and receives about $2300 a month through donations to her Patreon account.
Once a potential integrity issue is flagged, there is “an incredible conflict of interest in how these investigations are run,” said Dr. Schrag. “Institutions are asked to investigate their own faculty; they’re asked to investigate themselves.” That “creates the disincentive to move expeditiously,” said Dr. Schrag.
With the space of time, people who have committed fraud can throw out notebooks, delete data from servers, or even PhotoShop original photos so they match the manipulated ones that were submitted, Dr. Bik said.
Institutions could show they are serious about fraud by offering a “central, systematic universal screening of all image data going out of their institutions before submission to a journal,” said Dr. Rossner. But he knows only of a handful that do so. “I think research integrity offices have historically been very reactive, and they need to pivot and become proactive,” said Dr. Rossner.
Dr. Schrag wants to see stronger values within the research enterprise. “You have to build a culture where it’s absolutely anathema at a core level to violate these standards of research integrity,” he said. “We have this notion that we can push the process along faster and get to a grant and get to a paper and get to some short-term goal,” he said. “But the long-term goal in most of these cases is to cure a disease or to understand some biological mysteries. There’s no shortcut to getting there,” said Dr. Schrag.
There have been some high-profile consequences for research integrity failures, such as the 2023 resignation of Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne in the wake of findings that members of his lab — but not Tessier-Lavigne — engaged in data manipulation.
The process is often opaque, with investigations done in secrecy. “Consequences are not usually revealed, either,” said Dr. Rossner.
Dr. Schrag acknowledges it’s a tough balancing act for institutions to root out bad actors while also ensuring there’s no harm to those who may simply have operated in error.
“But it doesn’t serve anyone’s interest including the people who are accused, in dragging these things out for 5, 6, 8, or 10 years,” he said.