Category: Writing

A university investigator is in hot pursuit of a project
that received a mediumsized grant from the NIH. Her grant depends on the use of
reagents from an independent company. She has had a long and fruitful
relationship with the company—she has given several seminars at the company,
and her counterpart in the company has given several seminars at the
university. Also, the investigator has earned a few thousand dollars annually
from the company through consulting. She has signed a consultancy agreement
with the company without clearance from the university. Her agreement
relinquishes all her intellectual property rights regarding the subject of the
consultancy to the company. The investigator asked the university to sign a
material transfer agreement (MTA) so that she could start using the reagents.
The university refused because the MTA gave too many rights to intellectual
property to the company in exchange for the reagents. The university
investigator was anxious to start her project and make progress so that she
would be able to renew her grant. One day during her frequent seminars at the
company, she was asked to sign the MTA agreement, and she did. • What should
the university do? • What should the faculty member do? • What should the
company do?

A postdoctoral fellow made a complaint to the university
that his mentor, an associate professor, had falsifi ed the data in a newly
published report. The fellow alleged that patients’ reports of ovarian cancer
did not represent the actual data. The university convened an inquiry
committee, which determined that among the 120 subjects in the study, only 80
refl ected actual data. The records of the other 40 subjects contained various
types of errors as well as information that did not support the investigator’s
hypothesis. The inquiry committee concluded that although the investigator
showed considerable carelessness, there was no proof of intentional falsifi
cation of the data. • Do you agree with the university’s decision to not fi nd
that scientifi c misconduct had been committed? Do you think there are
circumstances where sloppy work should be considered misconduct, regardless of
the ability to prove intent? • Do you think that the university has any
responsibility to comment further on the investigator’s management of data or
to require assurances of appropriate data management in future research? • The
postdoctoral fellow went directly to the university without fi rst discussing
the issue with his mentor. Did the fellow have any obligation to contact his
mentor fi rst? • Should the investigator’s report be rescinded even though she
was not found guilty of misconduct?

An assistant professor presented his department chair with a
Howard Hughes Foundation grant proposal for her signature prior to sending it
off. The dean’s signature and those of other university offi cials were already
on the routing form. As usual, like most overworked administrators, the chair
checked the budget but did not read the grant. However, unlike many
administrators, this chair, after the grant was submitted, took the time to
read it. She became suspicious that several fi gures and tables in the grant
application had not been based on valid data. A discussion with the assistant
professor did not alleviate her concerns, and she fi led a complaint to the
university. After the university completed its investigation, the chair’s
suspicion was borne out: Several tables and fi gures had been altered to fi t
the overall hypothesis of the grant proposal. The assistant professor fi nally
admitted the falsifi cation.
• In this case, misconduct has already been determined. The
question here is whether the misconduct simply involved the actions of a “bad
apple” and was unavoidable, or whether the necessity of the university’s
investigative process could have been prevented, “bad apple” or not. If it was
avoidable, how could prevention have occurred? By individuals doing their jobs
better within a system that works, or by changing the system? For each
alternative, how could misconduct have been prevented?
• Should the university have ever investigated this problem,
given that the grant proposal is submitted to a private foundation?

A new assistant professor was accused of misconduct by a
technician at the university where she had trained. The accusation was that she
published a questionable abstract for a national meeting based on research that
was supported by an NIH grant. The problem was that the abstract contained data
that the technician could not fi nd in any of the laboratory notebooks. The
technician also determined that these data had never been used in any other
full-length published paper but had been part of the professor’s PhD
dissertation. The technician discussed his concerns with professor’s former
mentor, who in turn called the professor. Subsequently, the professor said that
she was not able to fi nd the data and claimed that it must have been
misplaced. The technician made an offi cial complaint both to the ORI and to
the university.
• If the grant had been from a non-NIH source, would the
university still have jurisdiction over this issue?
• What, if any, is the mentor’s responsibility for the
action of his former graduate student, either while she was a student or in the
preparation of this abstract? Does the mentor have any obligations beyond his
call to his former student?
• How do you assess the technician’s response, including
both the scope of his fact-fi nding activities and his decision making
regarding his complaint?
• Now that the complaint has been made, what do you think
should be the response of the assistant professor? The mentor? The ORI? The
university?
• How could the situation in this case have been prevented?