Retraction Watch (the body that monitors academic retractions and criticism) has posed an interesting ethical question – if researchers are found to have falsified data in publicly-funded research shouldn’t they or their institution be forced to pay?
If a grant were won based on an assumption that later turns out to be (at best) mistaken, should the grant money be repaid? On the face of it, this seems sensible but in practice – perhaps less so.
Scientific misconduct is rarely a crime in the strict sense as the perpetrator doesn’t usually receive a direct financial benefit. Institutional investigations into misconduct are often elephantine affairs that lumber on to unsatisfactory conclusions. Also, the money IS being used to fund precisely the academic research that was claimed so it is not technically fraud.
Another problem is that the grant money isn’t kept in a box under the lab bench – it’s usually quickly swallowed up by the institution’s overall research spend. The part used to pay the potential perpetrator’s salary is normally an insignificant share.
The article on Retraction Watch's website suggests a refund clause in grant applications that makes the institution liable for the misdeeds of its researchers when their findings are used to dishonestly procure funds. It argues that there should be a penalty for every cause of retraction – whether a result of deliberate wrongdoing or inadvertent misinterpretation.
However, I can foresee further complications…
What would the potential effect be on the journal that published the research? I can envisage a situation where an institution, grant body or researcher tries to sue a journal for failure of its peer review process in publishing a paper that later turns out to be falsified.
Journals are already understandably reluctant to retract papers – would they become even more so or would their editorial policy become more skewed towards well-trodden research topics with uncontroversial conclusions?
What about the Ethics Committee or IRB that approved the research? There is certainly an ethical dimension here – especially where the research involves human test subjects. Would the IRB or EC become pressured to become more selective in their approval process – possibly adding a further financial risk element to their deliberations?
Obvious in these cash-strapped times, we all want research funding to go where it has the greatest chance of bearing fruit, but I’m not sure this is the answer – it’s a very good question though!
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