The national research integrity oversight committee considered just five new allegations in the previous financial year. Perhaps the research community is spotless but it is hard to tell – the committee considers the conduct of investigations not actual allegations.
The Australian Research Integrity Committee reviews enquiries by institutions into misconduct, rather than investigating original complaints about the managements grants from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
ARIC’s new annual report states it declined to review eight matters, six regarding ARC funding, which were outside its brief. The committee assesses institutions’ compliance with investigations under the national code of research conduct and does not consider the meris of misconduct cases. ARIC can recommend an institution repeat an investigation, improve procedural fairness and “make adjustments” to processes.
As with the previous year ARIC’s findings focused on:
- institutions failing to clearly explain the code’s requirements for listing authors
- “lack of timeliness of investigations
- inadequate explanation of decisions
- not complying with the conduct code
- not keeping everybody involved in an allegation
- real and perceived conflicts of interest in investigations
As to how much research misconduct is out there, don’t ask ARIC – or universities that do not want to talk about cases on their patch.
But the absence of an independent agency to oversight research integrity is not damaging Australia’s reputation for science quality. A huge (71,000 respondents) global study of scientists reputations finds Australia rates fifth of 68 countries for trust in science, behind Egypt, India, Nigeria and Kenya and way ahead of the US (12), UK (15) and China (29).
“While there is no widespread lack of trust in scientists, we cannot discount the concern that lack of trust in scientists by even a small minority may affect considerations of scientific evidence in policymaking,” the army of authors conclude in a new Science Nature paper.
