Dooley J J, Kerch H M
Energy Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 901 D St. SW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C. 20024, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2000 Jan;6(1):109-21. doi: 10.1007/s11948-000-0029-8.
Scientific misconduct includes the fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) of concepts, data or ideas; some institutions in the United States have expanded this concept to include "other serious deviations (OSD) from accepted research practice." It is the absence of this OSD clause that distinguishes scientific misconduct policies of the past from the "research misconduct" policies that should be the basis of future federal policy in this area. This paper introduces a standard for judging whether an action should be considered research misconduct as distinguished from scientific misconduct: by this standard, research misconduct must involve activities unique to the practice of science and must have the potential to negatively affect the scientific record. Although the number of cases of scientific misconduct is uncertain (only the NIH and the NSF keep formal records), the costs are high in terms of the integrity of the scientific record, diversions from research to investigate allegations, ruined careers of those eventually exonerated, and erosion of public confidence in science. Existing scientific misconduct policies vary from institution to institution and from government agency to government agency; some have highly developed guidelines that include OSD, others have no guidelines at all. One result has been that the federal False Claims Act has been used to pursue allegations of scientific misconduct. As a consequence, such allegations have been adjudicated in federal courts, rather than judged by scientific peers. The federal government is now establishing a first-ever research misconduct policy that would apply to all research funded by the federal government regardless of which agency funded the research or whether the research was carried out in a government, industrial or university laboratory. Physical scientists, who up to now have only infrequently been the subject of scientific misconduct allegations, must nonetheless become active in the debate over research misconduct policies and how they are implemented since they will now be explicitly covered by this new federal wide policy.
科研不端行为包括伪造、篡改和抄袭（FFP）概念、数据或观点；美国的一些机构已将这一概念扩大到包括“其他严重背离公认研究规范的行为（OSD）”。正是缺少这一OSD条款，使得过去的科研不端行为政策与应成为该领域未来联邦政策基础的“研究不端行为”政策有所区别。本文引入了一个标准，用于判断一项行为应被视为与科研不端行为不同的研究不端行为：根据这一标准，研究不端行为必须涉及科学实践特有的活动，并且必须有可能对科学记录产生负面影响。虽然科研不端行为的案例数量尚不确定（只有美国国立卫生研究院和美国国家科学基金会保留正式记录），但就科学记录的完整性、从研究转向调查指控的精力分散、最终被宣告无罪者的职业生涯被毁以及公众对科学的信心受到侵蚀而言，成本高昂。现有的科研不端行为政策因机构而异，也因政府机构而异；有些机构有高度完善的指导方针，包括OSD，而有些机构则根本没有指导方针。结果之一是，联邦《虚假索赔法》已被用于追究科研不端行为的指控。因此，此类指控已在联邦法院进行裁决，而非由科学界同行评判。联邦政府目前正在制定一项有史以来的首个研究不端行为政策，该政策将适用于由联邦政府资助的所有研究，无论由哪个机构资助该研究，也无论该研究是在政府、工业还是大学实验室进行。到目前为止，很少成为科研不端行为指控对象的物理科学家，尽管如此，仍必须积极参与关于研究不端行为政策及其实施方式的辩论，因为他们现在将明确涵盖在这项新的联邦范围政策之中。
