When those we are after cheating

Just turning to May, a scandalous Indo-German research project dominated German papers as some scientists in the Stability of Rainforest Margins in Indonesia (STORMA) indicated several publications as “submitted to journals”, but no manuscripts were unfortunately available.

Explained in its website, STORMA project aims to analyse processes contributing to the stability of rainforest margins and to develop integrated concepts of sustainable land use. Largely funded by the Collaborative Research Centre of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/ DFG), this project has been executed since 2000 by two Indonesian universities and two German partner universities.

The damage done might not be anywhere near that of Jon Sudbo, whose fraudulent medical papers could have risked the health of the patients. Still, many were shell-shocked, as was the President of Georg-August-University Goettingen, one of the German participating universities. The university then quickly took some appropriate measures, reviewing related publications, including dozens of doctoral and master thesis produced from the project.

Nonetheless, questions still remain principally what motivates scientists to manipute their research and, more importantly, what should we do then to prevent such cases, at least to limit the occurence.There is no homogenous motives explaining scientific frauds, but in STORMA case, the following might explain. The scientists might have been driven by pressure, either to meet the pre-defined targets or even to exceed such targets. In either possibility, the involved scientists seem to impress the funding agency (DFG) for the project extension. Should the frauds have not been found, STORMA was about to be extended to the fourth phase (2009-12).

To prevent further frauds, without any doubt, although those involved in the intentional scientific misconducts should be treated fairly, they on the same time should experience with hard punitive measures. Not only have they damaged employers’ reputation, as admited by the President of Goettingen University, but also spoiled the reputation of science itself. As scientists, they have to be aware of their inherent responsibilities; i.e. promoting scientific honesty, by not doing so-called FFP:’ fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism’. The harsh measures would limit scientists of risking themselves of engaging in such frauds and are equally important as promoting good conduct of research.Such measures should also be complemented with robust monitoring systems, including periodical reviews on any on-going research. Collaboration work with other institutions, if possible worldwide, might also be useful as partners can act as a ‘control’, although this proved unworkable in STORMA.

More importantly, to prevent further scientific frauds, there should be reforms of culture in the research institutions. Currently, as STORMA case reveals, scientists are merely recognized for the number of publications they have produced, the number of research projects they have been in charge of and so on. Richard Horton of the Lancet , responding to Sudbo’s case, insists that scientists should be rewarded for: “the total life of what it means to be a scientist”, i.e. mentorship, education and training.

To the Indonesian context, ensuring scientific honesty is highly appropriate at least for the following reasons. First, scientific misconducts are thought as not uncommon in the country, mainly due the poor rules. There are a number of allegations that some have conducted FFP. The common allegations include producing publications by using others’ ideas without appropriate and sufficient acknowledgements.Unfortunately, they were rarely investigated so that the alleged scientists ‘enjoy’ the positions they should not keep, should had the otherwise (proper) measures been done. This can encourage further misconducts by others. Either they would intentionally do, due the ‘soft consequences’; or they do not simply realize that their conduct contravene good scientific practices as the previous similar conducts suggest such so.

Secondly, the country is yet to have a sound scientific code of practices, therefore the development of such a code is the paramount of importance. Once the ethical code is developed, then dissemination to scientists should be regularly done. To sum up, it would be a kind of exaggeration saying that scientists are the true defender for honesty. But they are clearly one of those who we are after for honesty.