Is it just me, or do people in the US pay more attention to scientific misconduct than, say, Europeans? Maybe it's not just me; a recent editorial by Xavier Bosch in BMJ argues that Europe lags significantly behind the US in monitoring scientific integrity.

In the US, many institutions and have departments in charge of handling allegations of misconduct. And failing this, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) deals with cases of misconduct and fosters scientific honesty at a national level. Furthermore, the ORI is taken very seriously; if you're facing the possibility of an ORI investigation, you are very likely to make sure your lab comes clean as soon as possible to try to keep their officers from paying you a visit.

In Europe, monitoring of scientific integrity is fragmented. Each country deals with the problem as they see fit, and the editorial does a good job of telling you what happens in what country. From my own experience, Spain is not an example of good practices. We once had an allegation of misconduct and could never get anybody from the university in question to get involved.

Bosch also puts forward some possible solutions to the problem. He seems to think that tackling it at a pan-European level would be the best way forward. This certainly makes sense if we consider that many European papers report the work of labs from different countries and that European funding promotes the formation of international networks.

The flip side of this is that European bureaucracy has a reputation for slowness and inefficiency. It is therefore easy to imagine an allegation of misconduct getting lost in the Kafkian labyrinths of the European Union's offices in Brussels, slowly ripening like a good French wine, but turning into vinegar for those who made the accusation and those who are trying to reproduce a piece of work that may be flawed.

In other words, the creation of a "European ORI" would be of value only if its procedures are streamlined and is not hindered by European policy and National laws. If it isn't given enough authority and autonomy, and is dragged down by bureaucratic procedures, then what sounds like a good idea in principle is also likely to turn into vinegar.

An alternative, also mentioned by Bosch, is the creation of ORIs in those countries in which research integirty is currently not monitored. This may sound less dramatic, but it strikes me as more useful, specifically in the context of the push by some journals (including ours) to encourage authors to disclose the specific contribution of each person in the author list to the work being reported. So, if there are problems with the confocal images, the Western blots or the statistical analysis, one can know without ambiguity who is responsible and who should be investigated by the local authorities.

Regardless of whether one prefers national or pan-European solutions, one thing's for sure: Europe has a lot of catching up to do on this front.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaking of Apoorva, before she left the journal she managed to produce a fitting swan song -- a collection of reports called "Science on a shoestring". In this collection, we present the stories of some scientists who, using materials as simple as litmus paper, bamboo and blenders, prove that science on a shoestring is possible.

We hope that these stories are inspiring, not only to other people who may not have the resources to do research, but also to those in rich labs, who often complain about their grants being rejected and about equipment being too expensive.

Back in Mexico, when I was starting in research, I do remember having to wash the plastic pipettes, as well as the pipette tips to reuse as many times as possible. We also had to remove the bottom of plastic graduated cylinders and glue a spout to them so that we could quantify the volume of liquid that our animals drank during their behavioral training. And we had these very elaborate contraptions to distill water, which was a precious commodity.

But that's enough reminiscing for one day. Instead, tell us what's happening in your neck of the woods. Do you also have to come up with clever inventions to compensate for the paucity of resources?

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Ok, now that Apoorva has left, I guess we'll need to blog more to keep Spoonful of Medicine alive. So, let's get things started with a brief mention of this month's Nature Medicine editorial.

In it, we imagine a world in which scientists could publish no more than 20 papers throughout their whole careers as a means to reduce scientific "inflation" -- the huge proliferation of scientific papers and journals, many of which add very little or even nothing to scientific knowledge.

If we adopted this 20-paper rule, many articles reporting incremental advances would no longer be written, and many specialized journals would disappear. And with far fewer papers to read, each one reporting a much more complete piece of research, search committees or funding bodies could directly evaluate the work of a given scientist, instead of leaning on surrogate indicators such as a journal's impact factor or number of citations, "evil" numbers that many of researchers love to hate.

We may not even need journals (and editors) anymore; everything would be published in preprint servers like those used by physicists, and the community would simply evaluate and rank the different contributions as they become available. This way, the whole community could act as reviewers, doing away with the existing peer-review process, another favorite target of many disgruntled scientists.

Of course, the key issue is whether you, as a working scientist, would agree to the 20-paper rule for the sake of cleaning up the scientific literature and improving on the peer-review process. Any takers?

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)