There is growing concern that Australia needs an independent watchdog for academic research. Many other countries have some form of oversight and now even researchers, themselves, are pushing for better standards. Bellow are excerpts from 2 articles in The Converstation. ABA supports this view as research underpinning the management of wild horses needs to be unbiased, rigorous and open to new thinking.
Research fraud: the temptation to lie – and the challenges of regulation
Most scientists and medical researchers behave ethically. However, in recent years, the number of high-profile scandals in which researchers have been exposed as having falsified their data raises the issue of how we should deal with research fraud.
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A culture of openness in respect of data needs to be fostered. Supervision and collaboration need to be meaningful, rather than tokenistic. And there needs to be an environment that enables challenge to researchers’ methodologies and proprieties, whether by whistleblowers or others.
Publishers, journal editors and the funders of scholarly research need to refashion the culture of scholarly publication to reduce the practice of gift authorship, whereby persons who have not really contributed to publications are named as authors. The issue here is that multiple authorship can cloud responsibility for scholarly contribution and blur responsibilities for oversight across institutions by ethics committees.
Journals need to be encouraged to be prepared to publish negative results and critiques and analyses of the limitations of orthodoxies.
When allegations are made, they must be investigated in a way that is going to command respect and confidence from all stakeholders. There is much to be said for the establishment of an external, government-funded Office of Scholarly Integrity. This could be based on the model of the US Office of Research Integrity, which is resourced and empowered to investigate allegations of scholarly misconduct objectively and thoroughly.
Australia needs an Office for Research Integrity to catch up with the rest of the world
Research in Australia funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) or the Australian Research Council (ARC) must comply with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.
The 2007 version of this code required independent, multi-person inquiry panels to handle allegations of serious misconduct. Findings were to be made public. Appeals could be made if new evidence arose.
In 2018 the code was changed. The changes meant:
- a single person from the same institution can now carry out inquiries
- secrecy must be maximised, with no requirement for public reports
- appeals can only be considered based on process and not on evidence, substance or merit.
One stunning change to the code – worthy of the political satire Yes Minister – was to make the term “research misconduct” optional. Institutions can now make up their own definition or dispense with the term entirely – and thus be rendered free of research misconduct in perpetuity!
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Australia needs an Office for Research Integrity to handle cases in all kinds of scholarly practice, not just in biomedical research, but also in physics, engineering and the humanities. In his comprehensive book Scholarly Misconduct: Law, Regulation and Practice, Ian Freckelton QC concluded:
“What has become clear is that the maladies afflicting scholarship cannot be dealt with wholly internally within universities and research bodies […] What is required is the creation by government of external bodies.
