A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine called for the scientific research community in the United States to improve research integrity practices and policies, including probing allegations of misconduct and promoting ethical action.

Its key recommendation: have universities and scientific organizations create and operate an independent non-governmental Research Integrity Advisory Board (RIAB) to strengthen this mission.

High Time For Cementing Research Integrity Standards

"The research enterprise is not broken, but it faces significant challenges in creating the conditions needed to foster and sustain the highest standards of integrity," said committee chair Robert Nerem, committee chair of the report titled “Fostering Integrity in Research” and published Tuesday, April 11.

Nerem finds good reason to do this now, as “Congress could step in” and act unilaterally. It likely would not have the research enterprise’s best interests, and one should be leery of such intervention, he explained.

The National Academy of Sciences has not established standards for appropriate scientific conduct in about 25 years, during which science has transformed significantly. Making research integrity far more complex than before, according to Nerem, are matters that include the rise of interdisciplinary research, the advent of new technologies, as well as greater global collaboration.

The committee started to work in 2012 on this, with the objective of updating its 1992 National Academies report dubbed “Responsible Science.” The said report proposed the same advisory body, but the call went unheeded, according to Science magazine.

The old report was prompted by a series of research misconduct cases that affected the field’s reputation as well as led to the formation of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to prove misconduct around federally funded biomedical research.

ORI as well as its counterpart office at the National Science Foundation (NSF) continue to receive allegations each year, resulting in dozens of misconduct findings.

Fabrication, Plagiarism, And Other Threats To Research Integrity

At Duke University several years earlier, an alleged fabrication by cancer researcher Anil Potti is considered one notorious example of integrity issues. For Nerem, the North Carolina school’s response to the misconduct charges was just “as flawed as the behavior itself.”

According to growing evidence, significant percentages of published results in certain areas are non-reproducible, which could be due to unidentified factors or errors. Experts increasingly find, however, that falsification of data and undesirable practices, such as misappropriating statistics, play a role in this irreproducibility.

New adverse practice also surface, including journals with little to no editorial review or quality control in papers they are publishing while they continue to charge authors with hefty fees. Journal article retractions have also climbed, with a substantial portion attributed to research misconduct.

The new report noted that the RIAB would foster ethical behavior without having a direct role in probes, regulation, or accreditation, as well as setting enforceable standards for the field.

It also urged government offices and private foundations funding scientific research to quantify conditions that may be associated with misconduct and detrimental practices.

Investigations, added Nerem, could also be subjected to external peer review currently done for journal articles as well as grant proposals.

The report comes at a time when scientists are rallying against changes that include proposed slashes in the science budget and health budget cuts as well as decreased interest in science-based factual inquiry.