University Responsibility for the Adjudication of Research Misconduct The Science Bubble

This book offers a scientific whistleblower’s perspective on current implementation of federal research misconduct regulations. It provides a narrative of general interest that relates current cases of research ethics to philosophical, historical and sociological accounts of fraud in scientific research. The evidence presented suggests that the problems of falsification and fabrication remain as great as ever, but hidden because the current system puts universities in charge of investigations and permits them to use confidentiality regulations to hide the outcomes of investigations. The book documents the significant conflict of interest that arises because federal regulation gives universities the responsibility to conduct investigations of their own faculty with severely limited oversight. The book is intended for young research scientists or anyone who wishes to understand the challenges faced by scientists in the workplace today. The central thread in the book is an exclusive account of an experienced research scientist who was the first to expose the facts that led to the longest running research misconduct investigation in the history of the National Science Foundation.

Chapter 1: Evolution in a test tube.- Chapter 2: Scientific discoveries, real and imagined.- Chapter 3: The transformation of the university into a corporation.- Chapter 4: The institutional pressure to become a professor-entrepreneur: Chapter 5. The clash between scientific skepticism and current ethics regulations.- Chapter 6: University administration of ethics.- Chapter 7: The short path from wishful thinking to scientific fraud.- Chapter 8: Behind the façade of self-correcting science.- Chapter 9: The origin of the modern research misconduct system.- Chapter 10: Sunshine laws and the smokescreen of confidentiality.- Chapter 11: The conflict between university financial interests and research ethics.- Chapter 12: Bursting the science bubble.

Stefan Franzen is a full professor of chemistry at North Carolina State University who has pursued research on the structure and spectroscopy of enzymes as well as mid-infrared plasmonic materials since his hire as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 1997. In 2006 he discovered a significant falsification of data in a collaborative project. For the following decade, because of his status as an academic whistleblower, the author was forced to study the ethical, legal and administrative framework of research misconduct regulation as implemented by universities and federal agencies. At the conclusion of a 10-year-long investigation the National Science Foundation confirmed the allegation. This serious case was the longest running investigation in the history of the NSF and according to Science magazine it “broke new ground” in the adjudication of research misconduct. During the intervening years, the administrative and personnel actions created a hostile work environment that constituted retaliation against the whistleblower. Based on allegations made in retaliation, the author was investigated twice by federal agencies and was the target of repeated informal administrative review, which was never formally declared as an investigation, but impacted his reputation. As a reaction to harassment and retaliation, starting in 2006 the author began a research and teaching career as a visiting professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China and at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. Despite the disruption of these events, the author maintained active funding from U.S. governmental agencies and has been research active up to the present.