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NIH's Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), born 3 years ago largely because of congressional complaints that the universities had proved themselves incapable of investigating allegations of scientific misconduct, now seems about to become a victim of similar complaints. For most of the past year, the office has taken a beating at the hands of nearly everyone who has come in contact with it, whether scientists under investigation and their lawyers, other researchers who want to see it police their profession more efficiently, university administrators, legislators, or the NIH director herself. The office staff is incompetent, some say. The process denies constitutional guarantees and basic fairness to those it investigates, say others. The complaints go on: The office has succumbed to unwarranted political influence. It's too slow. It confuses investigations with adjudications. Now NIH's parent agency, the Public Health Service (PHS), has proposed yet another cure-all (Science, 6 March, p. 1199)--in effect declaring that OSI's "scientific dialogue," an attempt to settle misconduct allegations through a scientific approach instead of a legal one, has been a failure. Its proposal has gone to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Louis Sullivan.
But as scientists get a better look at the bureaucracy suggested as a replacement for OSI, they could find they risk trading a devil they know for one they don't. For instance, in an attempt to reduce potential conflicts of interest where investigations of NIH researchers and grantees are concerned, the plan would shift OSI out of NIH into the office of Assistant Secretary of Health James Mason--the health official responsible for enforcing the Bush Administration's ban on research using human fetal tissue. And, by giving scientists accused of misconduct the right to request adjudicatory hearings, the proposal could result in PHS officials having power to subpoena witnesses in misconduct hearings, and might routinely make the details of allegations public. In fact, the reorganization plan provoked such a storm of discussion at a meeting last weekend of a PHS advisory committee, chaired by University of Michigan historian Nicholas Steneck, that its reception in the scientific community seems likely to be bumpy.
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