Solutions to Scientific Fraud: Should Research Misconduct Be Illegal?

You may not have heard of cardiologist Don Poldermans, but experts who study scientific misconduct believe Thousands may die Because of him.

Bordemans, a prolific medical researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, analyzed the standard of care for cardiac events after surgery and published a series of definitive studies from 1999 to the early 2010s.

A key question he studied was: Should patients be given beta blockers (which lower blood pressure) before certain surgeries? Bordmans’s study said yes. European medical guidelines (and, to a lesser extent, American guidelines) Recommend accordingly.

The problem lies with Boldman’s data Reportedly falseone In 2012, Erasmus Medical School (his home school) launched an investigation into allegations of misconduct He was found to have “used patient data without written permission, used false data and … submitted (reports) to conferences that contained intentionally unreliable data.” Poldermans Admit the charges and apologizewhile emphasizing that the use of fictitious data is purely accidental.

After the news came to light, a new meta-analysis was published in 2014 evaluating the use of beta-blockers before noncardiac surgery. It found Taking beta blockers made patients 27% more likely to die within 30 days of surgery. In other words, the policy that Bordmans recommended using falsified data (and that Europe adopted based on his research) actually greatly increased the chances of people dying during surgery.

Millions of surgeries were performed in the United States and Europe between 2009 and 2013, when these guidelines were misguided. A controversial analysis by cardiologists Graham Cole and Darrel Francis estimated that 800,000 deaths The mortality rate is higher than it would have been if best practices had been established five years earlier. While the exact number is hotly debated, a 27% increase in mortality for common surgeries over many years could represent a staggering death toll.

I learned about Bordmans’ case when I contacted some scientific misconduct researchers and asked them a provocative question: Should scientific fraud be prosecuted?

Unfortunately, fraud and misconduct in science are not as rare as one might think. We also know that the consequences of being caught are often disheartening. Even when the flaws are obvious, it can take years for a bad paper to be retracted. Sometimes, the scientist accused of falsifying data Filing frivolous lawsuits We know that this behavior carries high risks and can greatly Influencing patients’ treatment choices.

In cases where research dishonesty does result in loss of life, shouldn’t recourse to the criminal justice system be sought?

In some cases, research misconduct may be difficult to distinguish from carelessness.

If researchers fail to apply appropriate statistical corrections for multiple hypothesis testing, they may obtain spurious results. In some cases, researchers are strongly incentivized by academic culture to be careless in this way. Prioritize non-null results above all else (i.e., researchers are rewarded even if they find effects that are not methodologically sound, and are discouraged from publishing sound research if no effects are found).

But I don’t think prosecuting this kind of behavior is a good idea. It would have a serious negative impact on research and would likely make science slower and more legalistic – which would also lead to more deaths that could be avoided if science was allowed to proceed more freely.

As a result, discussions about whether to criminalize research fraud tend to focus on the clearest cases: intentional falsification of data. Elizabeth Beeke, a science researcher who studies fraud Made a name for himself Photographs of test results used in many medical journals Obvious changesThis was not an accidental mistake, so it represents some kind of baseline for manipulating the frequency of data releases.

While some scientific fraud may technically fall under existing rules against lying in documents such as grant applications, in practice it is almost never prosecuted. Bordmans eventually lost his job in 2011, but most of his papers were not even retracted, and he faced no further consequences.

But as awareness of fraud grows, frequency and its harms, some scientists and scientific fraud watchdogs Suggested changesA new law specifically targeting scientific fraud could draw a clearer line between carelessness and fraud.

The question is whether legal consequences will actually help solve our fraud problem. I asked Beek what she thought of the proposal to criminalize the kind of misconduct she studies.

Her response was that while it was not clear that criminalizing cheating was the right thing to do, people should understand that currently cheaters face few penalties. “When you see someone cheating, it’s annoying,” she told me. “Even when it comes to NIH grants, the penalties are very minimal. Even if you’re caught cheating, the penalties are very light. You’re ineligible for new grants for a year or sometimes three years. Very few people lose their jobs because of it.”

Why is this the case? Fundamentally, it’s a problem of incentives. Institutions are embarrassed if researchers commit misconduct, so they prefer to impose mild penalties rather than dig deeper. Few people are inclined to pursue the misconduct. “If the worst consequence for speeding was that the police said, ‘Don’t do that again,’ then everyone would speed,” Bick told me. “That’s the situation we have in science. You can do whatever you want. And if you get caught, it’s going to take years to investigate.”

In some ways, laws and regulations are not ideal solutions. Courts have the disadvantage of taking years to rule on complex cases. They are also poorly suited to answering detailed scientific questions and will almost certainly rely on the scientific agencies conducting the investigations — so it’s those agencies that matter, not whether they’re affiliated with a court, a nonprofit, or the NIH.

But in sufficiently serious cases of misconduct, it does seem to me that having an agency outside of academia investigating those cases is a big advantage. If designed properly, statutes that allow prosecution of scientific fraud could change the overwhelming incentives that allow misconduct to go unpunished and continue.

If an outside body, such as a prosecutor, is investigating, an institution can no longer easily protect its reputation by covering up fraud. But Bik says that outside body doesn’t actually have to be a prosecutor; an independent scientific review board might also suffice.

Ultimately, prosecution is a blunt instrument. Prosecutions may help to hold people accountable when no one wants to be held accountable—and I do think that prosecutions are a matter of justice in cases of misconduct that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. But it is neither the only way to address fraud nor necessarily the best way.

However, efforts to establish misconduct monitoring bodies within the scientific community have so far had only limited success. For now, if efforts are made to allow external bodies to monitor misconduct, I think it would be a good thing.

Correction, August 26, 3:30 p.m.: The story, originally published on August 23, misstated the types of surgeries reviewed by Poldermans and influenced by guidelines based on their false data; they were all noncardiac surgeries.