Research Misconduct Policy in Biomedicine ─ Beyond the Bad-Apple Approach

Federal regulations that govern research misconduct in biomedicine have not been ableto prevent an ongoing series of high-profile cases of fabricating, falsifying, or plagiarizingscientific research. In this book, Barbara Redman looks critically at current research misconductpolicy and proposes a new approach that emphasizes institutional context and improved oversight.

Current policy attempts to control risk at the individual level. But Redmanargues that a fair and effective policy must reflect the context in which the behavior in questionis embedded. As journalists who covered many research misconduct cases observed, the roots of fraud"lie in the barrel, not in the bad apples that occasionally roll into view." Drawing onliterature in related fields -- including moral psychology, the policy sciences, the organizationalsciences, and law -- as well as analyses of misconduct cases, Redman considers research misconductfrom various perspectives. She also examines in detail a series of clinical research cases in whichrepeated misconduct went undetected and finds laxity of oversight, little attention to harm done,and inadequate correction of the scientific record. Study questions enhance the book's value forgraduate and professional courses in research ethics.

Redman argues that the goalsof any research misconduct policy should be to protect scientific capital (knowledge, scientists,institutions, norms of science), support fair competition, contain harms to end users and to thepublic trust, and enable science to meet its societal obligations.

Barbara Redman is Dean and Professor in the College of Nursing at Wayne State University. She is the author of Advances in Patient Education, Advanced Practice Nursing Ethics in Chronic Disease Self-Management, and other books.