Program to correct problematic research practices

A $500,000 grant to Saint Louis University's Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics will fund the first ever remediation program to aid institutions when they discover researchers who have engaged in wrongdoing or unprofessional behavior. The Restoring Professionalism and Integrity in Research (RePAIR) program is expected to launch in November 2012.

The one-year grant from the National Institutes of Health comes to SLU through its partnership with the Washington University Institute for Clinical and Translational Science.

"Maintaining the public's trust and support is critical to the success of research. As the first program of its kind aimed at correcting problematic research practices, RePAIR will provide an important mechanism to support ethical researcher practices and maintain the public's trust," said Raymond Tait, Ph.D., vice president for research at SLU and a member of the RePAIR advisory committee.

James DuBois, Ph.D., D.Sc., project director and the Hubert Maeder Professor of Health Care Ethics at SLU, and his team kicked off the project in January with a needs assessment that was sent to 194 medical schools and comprehensive doctoral institutions. Of the 129 institutions that responded, 96 percent had investigated cases of wrongdoing in the past two years. On average, these institutions investigated four cases per year. Offenses ranged from minimal procedure violations to more extreme cases of data falsification, fabrication or plagiarism.

"The results of the assessment confirmed that wrongdoing in research is a widespread problem. It also highlighted the fact that institutions have very few options for responding to these cases," DuBois said.

Overall, the consequences for the accused researcher are minimal. According to DuBois, on one extreme, researchers get a slap on the wrist -- the institution issues a letter of reprimand and may increase oversight of the wrongdoer. Some institutions also offer limited internal training for researchers accused of wrongdoing. Universities can choose to fire the researcher, but this has financial implications including the loss of grant funding and the elimination of support positions. Only 30 percent of institutions that responded to the needs assessment indicated that they were very satisfied with their options for responding to research wrongdoing.

"We're hoping the RePAIR program will provide a good middle ground. It will be a substantial educational program that addresses the major causes of research wrongdoing and fosters good research practices and decision making skills," DuBois said.

"No one has ever attempted a formal program like this for researchers, but we're inspired by the success of physician remediation programs at the University of California San Diego and at Vanderbilt University, which have demonstrated that remediation programs can work."