Federal agency’s plan to disclose university misconduct findings splits academics
Advocates of greater transparency say the change, proposed by the federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI), would boost public confidence in research and correct the scientific record sooner.
Federal agency’s plan to disclose university misconduct findings splits academics
Institution leaders fear breach of privacy whereas transparency advocates call it an important step
8 DEC 2023
3:30 PM ET
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The U.S. government wants to strip away some of the secrecy surrounding university investigations of research misconduct by publicizing findings that institutions might otherwise keep confidential.
Advocates of greater transparency say the change, proposed by the federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI), would boost public confidence in research and correct the scientific record sooner.
“Good for [ORI],” says lawyer Tina Gunsalus, a veteran academic administrator who leads a center on research ethics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “The government provided the money to do the research,” she says. “And if the institution that received the money concludes that the work wasn’t up to the rigor expected, the public has a right to know.”
But many university administrators have serious reservations about the proposed change, announced in October and now open for public comment. Because the notice doesn’t spell out what information ORI might disclose or when it would use its new authority, they worry the information released might violate privacy laws or distort the actual findings.
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“ORI isn’t taking into account state, local, or institutional privacy or confidentiality considerations,” says Kris West of the Council on Governmental Relations, which monitors federal research policy for its hundreds of institutional members. She and others also question the legal basis for having ORI publicize the findings of another, outside organization. Such authority, says attorney Minal Caron of Ropes & Gray, who counsels universities conducting misconduct investigations, “would be inconsistent with the practices of other federal agencies.”
Created in 1992, ORI monitors the conduct of scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health and other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. It applies a three-pronged definition of research misconduct—fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.
Currently, institutions must notify ORI if they find misconduct and prescribe corrective action, such as retracting a paper. ORI can then begin a process leading to its own finding of misconduct, which it makes public—or it can let the matter rest, which often means that a misconduct finding never sees the light of day. The proposed change would give ORI a third option, that is, to simply announce what an institution has done.
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Eugenie Reich, a Boston attorney who represents whistleblower scientists suing institutions over alleged research misconduct, thinks the new authority “will be an incentive for universities to make their findings public.” She says ORI “is basically telling them that if you don’t, we might.”
The proposed language on disclosure is part of the first overhaul of rules ORI adopted in 2005. Expected to be finalized next summer, the changes would give universities less time to decide whether to pursue an allegation against a faculty member, require more record-keeping, and prohibit institutions from quickly closing a case they believe reflects “honest error.” ORI’s director, Sheila Garrity, has touted the changes as a “better way” to do business, and ORI has received favorable comments along with questions about how some changes would be implemented.
The disclosure provision is drawing particularly strong reactions. ORI’s notice says it would disclose institutional findings only “to protect the health and safety of the public … or to conserve public funds.” It promises not to include “the names or other identifying information of the respondent(s),” referring to the scientist found guilty of misconduct.
Susan Garfinkel, vice president for research compliance at Ohio State University and former head of ORI’s investigative unit, sees some value in disclosure. “People want to know if the paper was flawed, and if some of the data in it can’t be trusted,” she says. “So I’d support announcing that the image in figure six was fabricated.”
But she and many other research administrators worry about a loss of control over what is an institutional product. They also fret that the information released could mischaracterize the overall findings or provide enough clues about identities to damage the reputations of lab associates or co-authors not involved in the misconduct. “These reports are hard to write, and university committees struggle to get the wording just right,” Caron says. “So a brief summary could be very misleading, and leave a permanent dark cloud hanging over the head of someone who’s not at fault.”
Garfinkel and West say citing the problematic paper would make preserving anonymity impossible. That makes Garfinkel uncomfortable in cases where ORI decided not to issue its own finding of misconduct. In the case of university-only misconduct findings, she says, “Sometimes you want to give people a chance to recover from it, and stay in science. But that’s hard to do once you’ve been named.”
Garrity declined to provide more details about the disclosure policy. But she says she welcomes feedback from interested parties, who have until 4 January 2024 to submit comments.
Garfinkel hopes her colleagues will offer enough pushback to convince ORI to remove the language before issuing the final rules. But Gunsalus thinks critics are overstating the potential risk of ORI’s new authority. “Some universities have released their findings, and the sky hasn’t fallen,” she says. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant. So let us see the work.”