Preventing scientific misconduct

Disease prevention frameworks sometimes include a category of tertiary prevention, which typically involves rehabilitation and other aspects of long-term care. Tertiary prevention can also be applied to scientific misconduct, inasmuch as those who commit such misconduct may require rehabilitation before they return to scientific practice. A more complete analysis will likely lead, as it did in the case of primary and secondary prevention, to questions with answers based on relatively little empirical information. Indeed, in the foregoing analysis, a host of such questions have emerged. Answers will be difficult to obtain, especially if precise scientific methodologies are to be employed. But then, we are scientists, and solving difficult empirical problems is what we do best. Perhaps the essential question is less methodological than motivational: Are we as scientists willing to study our conduct as scientists? If so, then one day we may discover why we suffer from an important and sometimes disabling professional affliction and what works to prevent it. I am not suggesting, however, that we should postpone interventions until we fully understand the etiology, including the underlying biological, behavioral, and social mechanisms involved in the range of activities we call scientific misconduct. We need fair investigative procedures. We can accept (perhaps) on faith that the discussion of the role of ethics in the conduct of science and medicine should be expanded. Those of us who act as mentors can and should conduct ourselves virtuously. For the sake of those we train, and especially for those whose lives are improved by our scientific results, we must exhibit excellence, self-effacement, and, perhaps above all, an unwavering commitment to the truth.