Research misconduct - the ball passes to the institutions....

A consortium of journal editors have ganged up on institutions that have previously employed disgraced Japanese anaesthetist Yoshitaka Fujii, asking them to authenticate up to 193 publications, or else these publications will be retracted. These allegations were based on a letter by John Carlisle, published in the journal Anaesthesia. (See letter by Editors).

Yoshitaka Fujii has been the subject of alleged scientific fraud since 2000 when a group of researchers led by Peter Kranke accused Fujii in a letter to the journal, Anesthesia & Analgesia. Despite these allegations, neither journals nor institutions that Fujii worked for, attempted to do anything about it. Anesthesia & Analgesia, in fact, continued to publish up to 10 papers by Fujii. The University of Toho eventually sacked Fujii in February this year, for ethical breaches in a number of studies.

What has been exceptional in this recent move by the journal editors, has been the bold, albeit overdue response to act on these allegations of fraud. The threat to retract 193 publications if carried out will represent the most drastic journal action for serial scientific fraud ever. The public communication between the consortium of journal editors and Japanese institutions may represent the first such concerted action to force the institutions to take research misconduct seriously. This passes the ball back to the institutions. Let's hope that institutions around the world will not continue to buat bodoh about allegations of research misconduct. There is no place for Lord Horatio Nelson in research.

Research misconduct - a problem in Singapore or not?

from http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/socialsideofscience_06

It's probably unrealistic to expect that scientists can be less unethical than salesmen or wall street bankers. Historians are by now pretty convinced that some of our most illustrious scientific minds, Gregor Mendel, Isaac Newton and even Albert Einstein misconducted themselves in their presentation of critical data. So it should come as no surprise that scientists of today do cheat. Except that because today's research stakes are so high and because biomedical research is nowadays such a big industry, we should expect that, notwithstanding all the goodie-goodie posturing, biomedical scientists do cheat a lot.

An electronic BMJ survey in the UK of 2782 respondents (out of 9036 invitations) revealed that 13% of the respondents had either witnessed or had first hand knowledge of research misconduct. Not only that, but the respondents also felt that about half of these cases had been inadequately investigated.

from http://www8.open.ac.uk/platform/blogs/society-matters/new-survey-questions-scientific-integrity

The recent unveiling of Dr Anil Potti's research dishonesty (see Wikipedia; Economist) show not only how extensive research misconduct can get, but also how large prestigious research establishments are not immune to such dishonesty. (Dr Potti was a reknown Duke University oncologist and researcher). Many felt though, that his case was a long time cooking, perhaps too long, and that this delay reflected
some reluctance in the establishment to press home early allegations.

Another kettle about to boil over involves Dr BA Aggarwal at another prestigious establishment, the  MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is apparently under investigation at the moment. In Singapore, we have the Alirio Melendez story, which has been under investigation for an extremely long time without any apparent outcome.

Is research misconduct a problem in Singapore? It is hard to tell. But there is nothing to indicate that we are any more or less ethical compared to researchers in UK or the US. The absence of any national ombudsman to investigate allegations of misconduct may limit the identification and surfacing of such cases. Blogs such as Abnormal Science and Retraction Watch do occasionally flag out some questionable practices from Singapore (see here), but there is currently no indication that our research establishments are taking any of these seriously. I guess Lord Horatio Nelson rules in Singapore with respect to investigating misconduct in biomedical research.

I should make it very clear that I make a very clear distinction between allegations and proven misconduct. Much of what has been highlighted in blogs such as Abnormal Science are little more than allegations, and even if there are malpractices, it is unclear what actually happened and who is responsible for the 'errors'. Nevertheless research establishments do need to recognize the presence of these allegations in the blogosphere and to deal with them. It is not in anybody's interested to pretend that such allegations do not exist, especially if they are accompanied by documentary evidences of questionable data integrity. We need to have these properly pinned down, and if there is any real misconduct, the research community and particularly the students need to be aware of these pitfalls and wrong doings.

For further reading, please see:
Singapore statement on research integrity
Columbia University portal for Responsible Conduct of Research

Given the amount of money we are pouring into biomedical research in Singapore, it is somewhat surprising that we do not take the policing of research misconduct more seriously. Perhaps it is time we had a national ombudsman for this purpose.

Turning a blind eye.....

Partial blindness presents an interesting physiological problem. This is because the nerve fibres on the way from the eyes to the brain partially cross over. At about where the pituitary gland is, the nerve fibres from the inner side of the each eyeball switch sides. This creates a situation where, depending on where the damage is, you may have very different kinds of blindness.

For example, if you lose an eyeball, because of the overlapping of the visual fields of each eye, you do not lose half of your vision. The actual amount of loss of the total visual field is only about 25-30%. What is most disturbing about loss of an eye is the loss of binocular perception and consequently, loss of depth perception.

If on the other hand, if there is complete damage to the optic fibres after the crossing has occurred, there will be potentially greater loss of the visual field, up to 50%.

Intuitively however, we are misled to think a person with an eyepatch is more blind (loss ofvisual field) than a person who may appear normal externally but has a lesion of one of the optic tracts or has damage to the visual cortex of the brain.

So there are times the eyes see but the brain is unable to process the information, while at other times, the eye appears not to see but the brain is actually visually aware. There are social equivalents to these kinds of blindness. For example, data and information is available but the brain is quite blind in not being able to perceive the real signals. The recent discordant interpretations of rainfall patterns show a bit of this hemianopsia. The brain has been conditioned to only see no change despite the signals it received. Likewise, the Central Narcotics Bureau last year was caught in the embarrassing situation of having to 'fess up to misreading the data it had collected. Instead of a downward trend in drug addiction, the numbers had actually been trending upwards.

By contrast, there is the other kind of blindness where people can actually see but pretend to be more blind than they actually are. Such was the case with the famous British naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson. He was well known to be blind in one eye. Now we now know that losing one eye only loses about 25-30% of your visual field, but when he was given a visual signal to withdraw during a battle, he famously quipped, "You know, Foley, I have only one eye - and I have a right to be blind sometimes... I really do not see the signal." So thanks to Lord Nelson, we now have the expression, "turning a blind eye", when we choose not to see something very obvious.

Our vice squad appear to be somewhat guilty of this, when they appear to be blind to the numbers of streetwalkers lined up along the roadside in Geylang. Sometimes the policeman does this when you complain of something illegal happening. The Lord Nelson in him tells you that it never happened unless someone made a official report. Sounds a bit like our Singapore Medical Council. Medical wrong-doings never happened unless someone had officially made a report, even when things were as evident as day.

There are many Lord Nelsons ruling in biomedical research nowadays apparently. Despite detailed evidences of unethical and fraudulent behaviour flagged up in a number of websites such as Retraction Watch and Abnormal Science, journal editors, research institutes and universities continue to feign ignorance while professing to hold high standards of ethical practices. Just ignore the reports from blogs.

Lord Horatio Nelson will be proud.