Fraud : causes and culprits as perceived by science and the media

Almost 2 years after Woo Suk Hwang and colleagues published groundbreaking work on the creation of human embryonic stem-cell lines, an investigation committee from Seoul National University, South Korea, announced that much of the research had been fabricated. Human embryos had not been cloned and stem-cell lines had not been derived from patient-specific somatic cells. Science retracted the two articles concerned, and Hwang and several members of his research team were later indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement of research funds and violations of bioethical laws. In the aftermath of this case, many scientists expressed concerns that the public image of science, and of stem-cell research in particular, had been tarnished. “Scientists fear that the episode will damage not only public perceptions of stem-cell research, but science’s image as a whole” (Check & Cyranoski, 2005). Others were more optimistic and hoped that the case would “serve as an antidote to the ‘tabloidization’ of stem-cell research and ... make the public conscious of the fact that the science is difficult” (Snyder & Loring, 2006). Some simply regarded the race as open again: “At one point, the research community thought that we might have, in Hwang, a technical virtuoso. Now we recognize that we all remain on an equal footing” (Snyder & Loring, 2006). The Hwang case provides a good example of how the scientific community and the mass media deal with fraudulent behaviour in science. Both give the impression that misconduct is committed mainly by individuals who have lost—or never had—a scientific ethos, while reassuring the public that fraudulent scientists are ultimately caught and punished. Indeed, agencies dealing with cases of scientific misconduct, such as the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in Rockville, Maryland, and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Bonn, also proceed on the assumption that misconduct is a problem at the level of the individual. Instead, we argue here that there are other factors—emanating from institutional changes within science (Weingart, 2001)—that favour misconduct, and might make it more widespread than is suggested by the scientific community and the media. The public discussion of scientific fraud might act to strengthen the scientific ethos, whereas the underlying conditions that encourage misconduct work continuously to erode it.