www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/apr/19/doctor-research-fraud-us-deserves-sympathy
Doctor who admitted research fraud in the US deserves our sympathy
Peter Francis was a victim of a funding system that demands the answer before it will pay you to ask the question:
The US government's Office of Research Integrity this week issued the summary of a scandal that has been percolating for nearly a year. Peter J Francis, a British medical doctor and PhD, had applied for a grant using fabricated data.
If a journalist had caught him, of course, he'd have got a severe kicking. "Exposed: scandal of eye doc fraud". Nice one. But with the luxury of reflection, the knee-jerk reaction is misguided. Francis didn't deserve a perp walk. He was a victim.
Think about his world, filled with anonymised data that can be fiddled. And fiddled it is. At a conference organised three months ago by the BMJ and the UK Committee on Publication Ethics, for example, a survey reported that 6% of British scientists (anonymously) admitted research fraud, and 13% said they'd witnessed it done.
Given inevitable under-reporting, you might think "everyone's at it". Now go back to Francis's world. Such is the level of competition, and the rising demand for "translation" into commercial products, a rational researcher might conclude: "I'm forced to do the same." The alternative is to lag behind and lose out.
Indeed, Francis's fraud has a perverse logicality in the face of a paradox first spotted before Socrates. Sometimes funders want the answer before they'll pay to ask the question. The word "hunch" scores poorly with reviewers.
This is a modern model of inquiry, less driven by ambition and curiosity than by fear of short-term failure. I'd be happy if Francis mailed me to say otherwise, but the way I see it he likely felt boxed-in: on someone's budget, facing rivals, with urgent work to do.
And his work was important, searching for cures from which millions might benefit. The Foundation Fighting Blindness certainly thought so, helping to fund his research. This was a scientist who deserved to be protected, both from the crueller demands of research and from himself.
The remedy, in my view, will begin with recognising a truth: that science isn't particularly special, or specially honest. So I say: level the playing field with research police and lab inspections, so those like Francis can relax rather than cheat.
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