Fraud in Science: Bad Apples in the Barrel?
THE world of medical research was astir with excitement. A 24-year-old graduate student at Cornell University had come up with a new theory on the cause of cancer and the experimental data to support it. The work seemed so impressive that some thought it could win him and his professor the Nobel prize.
By those who worked with him, the young man was considered one of the brightest scientists. In just a few weeks he was able to complete certain experiments that others had been struggling with for years. Projects seemed to work only when he was involved. Things seemed just too good to believe.
The reason soon became apparent. In July 1981, fraud was discovered in his work. A chemical that should not have been there evidently made the experiments turn out the way they were expected to. Quickly, scientific papers published on his work were withdrawn. Further investigations revealed that somehow he had entered graduate school without earning either a bachelor’s or a master’s degree. And professors in other schools he had attended recalled his not being able to repeat experiments he claimed to have done.
This incident is but one in a series of scandals that has jolted the world of science in the last few years. While it brought his apparently promising career to ruin, another case uncovered at about the same time brought what was considered “the stiffest penalty the Government has ever imposed for scientific falsification.”
Barely seven years out of medical school, another brilliant student, aged 33, already had to his credit over a hundred research papers published in major scientific journals. His work was considered brilliant and creative by his colleagues, and he was on his way to becoming a member of the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the head of his own research laboratory.
But this success story was soon to crumble. In May 1981, when asked to produce the lab data for an experiment he claimed to have done, he was found falsifying his records to make a few hours’ work look like what would have taken a couple of weeks to do. Soon more of his work became suspect. It was also discovered that he, without their knowledge, had used the names of other scientists as coauthors for many of his papers, and some of the experiments on which the papers were based were completely fictitious. Somehow he had managed to operate undetected for 14 years.
What made these cases particularly disturbing was the fact that they came to light right on the heels of a U.S. congressional hearing on fraud in science. That hearing, held on March 31 and April 1, 1981, was conducted to investigate a series of frauds in research that had been uncovered just prior to that time.
Among them was one in which an associate professor at the Yale University School of Medicine was found plagiarizing another researcher’s work along with forging and smoothing out the data in his own report. Another case involved a senior researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital. In a study of Hodgkin’s disease, a form of cancer, he had used cell cultures that turned out to be from an owl monkey and from a person who did not appear to have the disease.
In addition to shock, embarrassment and disappointment, news of such fraudulent practices casts a heavy shadow over the credibility and image of science and scientists in the minds of the public. How can fakeries go so far and for so long before being detected?
Invariably, the reply from the scientific community is that these cases were nothing more than a few bad apples in the barrel, blown out of proportion by the press. They argue that with the large number of scientists working today the few cases of fraud uncovered only prove that science has a far better batting average than almost any other field of endeavor. This, they insist, is because science is a self-correcting system, and it has a built-in mechanism that would spot any attempts at forgery quickly and efficiently.
The way any scientific work comes to be recognized is through publication in one of the professional journals. Papers to be published are first evaluated by an independent panel of experts, known as referees. This process is said to be the first line of defense against forgery. Once the work is published, it is open to the entire scientific community not only for scrutiny but also for replication, that is, the experiment must be repeatable by others. Obviously, if any forgery is involved, it is argued, it would show up at this stage.
Additionally, due to the high cost of scientific research today, much of it is supported by government grants. Again, grant applications are reviewed by government-appointed advisory committees made up of experts in the field. By this procedure unworthy and questionable proposals can be screened before they even get started.
With such a system—so goes the argument—it is highly unlikely that anyone would even attempt to perpetrate a fraud. In fact, anyone who does so must be mentally unbalanced or disturbed, in the same league with the celebrated Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The arguments seem sound enough, at least in theory. What about in practice? Are cases of fraud really such rare exceptions as the scientists claim? Are the ones who have been caught mental deviants or schizophrenics? Is there something we, the laymen, can learn from the phenomenon of fraud in science?
[Blurb on page 4]
Falsified research, plagiarism, forgery and a congressional investigation of fraud in science