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Fifty shades of fraud in Flanders

May 3, 2013

Following on from the publicity surrounding the Diedrik Stapel case, a new survey of medical researchers in Flanders confirms that fraud is fairly prevalent. This takes the form of making up data, manipulating data to make it match a hypothesis, plagiarism, double publishing (self-plagiarism), withholding undesirable research results, undeserved authorships or dividing research into as many separate science articles as possible (salami slicing). The article by Reinout Verbeke and Joeri Tijdink was produced with the support of the Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism. One in twelve medical scientists admits to making up or ‘massaging’ data in order for it to match a hypothesis. And almost six in twelve see such fraudulent practices happening around them. They identify high publication pressure as one of the causes. Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch points out that for the medical research fraternity the high rewards from pharmaceutical companies can also play a role.

In November and December 2012 Belgian  science journalist Reinout Verbeke (editor of Eos Magazine) spread an anonymous survey on fraud and pressure to publish among scientists of the Medical Science faculties of all Flemish universities. ……..  Psychiatrist and researcher Joeri Tijdink (VU University Medical Center Amsterdam) collaborated on the survey. He did another sounding in 2011 in the Netherlands, before the scandal surrounding Diederik Stapel had broken out – the social psychologist who had made up data and experiments. For years nobody had been on to him. Stapel and his unsuspecting doctoral students and co-authors even made top magazines with their fictitious studies. Luckily though, such large-scale fraud is rather rare. ……..

Fifty shades of fraud

Fifty shades of fraud

The results of the Flemish survey are striking. Of the 315 participating scientists, four (1.3%) admit to having made up data at least once in the last three years. If what they say is true, this probably concerns fraud that is still undiscovered. 23 respondents (7.3%) admit to having selectively removed data or results to make research match a hypothesis, so-called ‘data massaging’. Overall, about 8% of the Flemish medical scientists admits to recently having made up and/or massaged data. The figures are worse than the international average. A meta-analysis of 18 scientific studies on fraud by Daniele Fanelli showed that on average 2% of all scientists (from different fields of study) admitted to having done similar practices at least once (PloS ONE, 2009). Why are the results among Flemish respondents even worse? “That doesn’t surprise me, because we are talking about medical scientists”, says American journalist and fraud expert Ivan Oransky from RetractionWatch. com. “Cooperating with the pharmaceutical industry gains researchers financial rewards. That could pressurise scientists to cut corners.” André Van Steirteghem, a pioneer in reproductive medicine and secretary of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), thinks there is something else at play. “There’s is a significant lack of openness on fraud and malpractice at Flemish universities. This survey asked scientists about their perceptions for the very first time. They were able to vent their feelings. I think that explains the high figures in Flanders.” We can even suspect malpractices in Flanders to be more wide-spread still. “Surveys have their limits”, says Daniele Fanelli. “Many cheaters won’t admit to having done it, or will falsely assume they have a clean conscience.” …… 

Scientific American reports on this story here.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Belgium, Science | Comments Off on Fifty shades of fraud in Flanders

Resentment and charges of misconduct and bias at the Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB)

April 30, 2013

It is not so easy to judge if the charges of bias and misconduct at the New Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering (ICGEB) and Biotechnology are just because

  • some disgruntled junior researchers are envious about the much higher salaries of their seniors, or
  • it is because of resentment by mediocre scientists when their work is not considered of a quality and significance sufficient to earn them authorship of scientific papers, or
  • because senior scientists are exploiting junior post-doctoral researchers

The ICGEB is part of the United Nations System where of course officials tend to take care of their own.

But whatever the real reason a “scientific institution” which establishes and perpetuates  two classes of scientists where salary scales of the one are double that of the other seems a particularly ill thought-out scheme and – at best – just plain stupid. It not only invites resentment but also implies that the quality of the research done is judged by the salary paid to the researcher.

ICGEB-ND_Building

New Delhi Component of the ICGEB

The ICGEB is an international, nonprofit research organization. Established as a special project of UNIDO, it became fully autonomous in 1994 and now counts over 60 Member States. … With Components in Trieste, Italy, New Delhi, India and Cape Town, South Africa, the Centre forms an interactive network with Affiliated Centres in ICGEB Member States. The New Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering (ICGEB) and Biotechnology is dedicated to advanced research and training in molecular biology, infectious disease biology, and biotechnology.

The Calcutta Telegraph reports: 

Allegations of discrimination, academic misconduct and lack of transparency over dramatic differences in researchers’ salaries have tainted a 25-year-old international research centre here that is hailed for its excellence in science.

Indian and foreign scientists are trying to resolve what they say is a dual crisis gripping the New Delhi component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB): loss of foreign funding and discontent among researchers.

A panel of Indian scientists set up by the department of biotechnology is examining options to resolve the issue of future funding. ICGEB director-general Francisco Baralle from Italy is expected to meet department of biotechnology secretary Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan and the research institution’s staff here on April 30. ……

Twenty-four of the 30 senior scientists at the ICGEB, New Delhi, have asked Baralle to remove the Delhi director, Virander Chauhan, correspondence between the scientists and Baralle between September 2012 and February 2013 shows.

Also, a grievance committee report from within the ICGEB shows that two former researchers have complained that a senior scientist at the institution, Kanury Venkata Subba Rao, denied them authorship on a research paper.

Both Chauhan and Rao have denied any wrongdoing. ……. 

……. Some of the discontent appears to stem from differences in the salaries of scientists. The ICGEB has a two-tier pay structure — an international scale where a post-doctoral scientist could start at Rs 150,000 per month, paid in US dollars, and a national scale where a similarly qualified scientist would begin at about Rs 75,000 a month.

“The original idea at the ICGEB’s creation in 1988 was to draw the best from international faculty,” said a senior Indian scientist involved in the efforts to resolve the crisis.

“But all the 10 international-grade scientists’ positions there are now held by Indians. There seems to be discord now because sections of scientists feel there should not be huge salary differences between similarly performing and similarly qualified researchers.” ……

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Science, UN | 1 Comment »

Why is the New York Times publicising fraudster Stapel’s book?

April 30, 2013

I would not have expected the New York Times to be an apologist and a publicist for a fraudster.

The case of Diedrik Stapel and all the data he faked by just making them up to fit his pre-determined results will always bring discredit to the field (not science) of social psychology. But Stapel is now busy creating a new career for himself where his fraud itself is to be the vehicle of his future success. He has written a book about his derailment and the adoring media have not only forgiven him but are now playing an active part in his rehabilitation: in  humanising him and publicisng his book. The con continues and the media are (perhaps unwitting) partners to the con.

The New York Times ran a long “analytical” article about Stapel and his fraud a few days ago. A long interview with Stapel and ostensibly a “neutral” piece the article is entirely concerned with humanising the “criminal”.  It seems to me that Stapel is very successfully continuing to manipulate the media which earlier used to idolise him for his ridiculous “studies” (eating meat made people selfish!). But if you look at the NYT piece as a piece of marketing material for a book written by a discredited author it all makes sense. In fact the NYT article might just as well have been commissioned by the publishers of the book

NYT:  …. Right away Stapel expressed what sounded like heartfelt remorse for what he did to his students. “I have fallen from my throne — I am on the floor,” he said, waving at the ground. “I am in therapy every week. I hate myself.” That afternoon and in later conversations, he referred to himself several times as tall, charming or handsome, less out of arrogance, it seemed, than what I took to be an anxious desire to focus on positive aspects of himself that were demonstrably not false. ….. 

Stapel did not deny that his deceit was driven by ambition. But it was more complicated than that, he told me. He insisted that he loved social psychology but had been frustrated by the messiness of experimental data, which rarely led to clear conclusions. His lifelong obsession with elegance and order, he said, led him to concoct sexy results that journals found attractive. “It was a quest for aesthetics, for beauty — instead of the truth,” he said. He described his behavior as an addiction that drove him to carry out acts of increasingly daring fraud, like a junkie seeking a bigger and better high. ….

The report’s publication would also allow him to release a book he had written in Dutch titled “Ontsporing” — “derailment” in English — for which he was paid a modest advance. The book is an examination of his life based on a personal diary he started after his fraud was made public. Stapel wanted it to bring both redemption and profit, and he seemed not to have given much thought to whether it would help or hurt him in his narrower quest to seek forgiveness from the students and colleagues he duped.

The New York Times : The mind of a con man Published: April 26, 2013

“The book is an examination of his life based on a personal diary he started after his fraud was made public.”  writes our intrepid NYT reporter.

Really? – and how much of this self-serving “diary” was faked or just made up?

Willingly or otherwise, the New York Times (and the reporter Yudhijit Bhattacharjee) are being duped and manipulated by a consummate fraudster.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Fraud, Media, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »

Monkeys – except the top monkey – switch behaviour to conform to local customs

April 29, 2013

Where humans are in a subordinate position in a new society (new immigrants for example) they usually conform to avoid attracting attention which could be dangerous. They observe, they copy behaviour to try to fit in and thereby ensure their own security in the new environment. All driven no doubt by the instinct to survive. But a conquering human does not bother to conform to local customs – he imposes his own. All humans are clearly capable of both types of behaviour. Whether to conform or not is then entirely dependent upon the individual’s position in the society he finds himself in.

And monkeys are – it seems – no different.

I suspect this holds true for many more species than just humans and primates and am a little surprised that the researchers are surprised at this behaviour.

A new paper: E. van de Waal, C. Borgeaud, A. Whiten. Potent Social Learning and Conformity Shape a Wild Primate’s Foraging Decisions. Science, 2013; 340 (6131): 483 DOI:10.1126/science.1232769

From University of St. Andrews press release:

Noha group feeding on pink corn

Noha group feeding on pink corn

….. In the initial study, the researchers provided each of two groups of wild monkeys with a box of maize corn dyed pink and another dyed blue. The blue corn was made to taste repulsive and the monkeys soon learned to eat only pink corn. Two other groups were trained in this way to eat only blue corn. A new generation of infants were later offered both colours of food – neither tasting badly – and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which colour they had previously preferred. Almost every infant copied the rest of the group, eating only the one preferred colour of corn.

The crucial discovery came when males began to migrate between groups during the mating season. The researchers found that of the ten males who moved to groups eating a different coloured corn to the one they were used to, all but one switched to the new local norm immediately.

The one monkey who did not switch, was the top ranking in his new group who appeared unconcerned about adopting local behavior.

Dr van de Waal conducted the field experiments at the Inkawu Vervet Project in the Mawana private game reserve in South Africa. She became familiar with all 109 monkeys, making it possible for her to document the behaviour of the males who migrated to new groups.

She said, “The willingness of the immigrant males to adopt the local preference of their new groups surprised us all. The copying behaviour of both the new, naïve infants and the migrating males reveals the potency and importance of social learning in these wild primates, extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.”

Commenting on the research, leading primatologist Professor Frans de Waal, of the Yerkes Primate Center of Emory University, said that the study “is one of the few successful field experiments on cultural transmission to date, and a remarkably elegant one at that.”

Abstract: Conformity to local behavioral norms reflects the pervading role of culture in human life. Laboratory experiments have begun to suggest a role for conformity in animal social learning, but evidence from the wild remains circumstantial. Here, we show experimentally that wild vervet monkeys will abandon personal foraging preferences in favor of group norms new to them. Groups first learned to avoid the bitter-tasting alternative of two foods. Presentations of these options untreated months later revealed that all new infants naïve to the foods adopted maternal preferences. Males who migrated between groups where the alternative food was eaten switched to the new local norm. Such powerful effects of social learning represent a more potent force than hitherto recognized in shaping group differences among wild animals.

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The Green mantra of “No we can’t” is unsustainable

April 28, 2013

It is a bright, sunny Sunday morning and I refuse to allow Green predictions of impending doom dent my optimism.

The Greens – no doubt – mean well.

Earnest, self-righteous, Malthusian, smug, often sanctimonious but rarely rational, the Greens of today are always ready to tell others what to do and what is best for them. From being – once upon a time – a constructive movement with practical and laudable objectives of improving local environments, it has developed into an authoritarian, arrogant, dogmatic, semi-religious and mildly fascist ideology. It has been perverted by scenarios of catastrophe and subverted by delusions of grandiose global ambitions. It is more concerned with forbidding behaviour it considers undesirable and of coercing people to comply. It has forgotten that humanity is an integral and necessary part of the environment.

I take the view that our descendants will be smarter than we are, that human ingenuity will meet the challenges to come and that change is the essence of humanity. Adapting to change is what has powered human evolution and it is in designing the changes to come which will drive our future evolution. Stagnation and maintaining a status quo in the name of conservation is essentially backward looking and an abdication of responsibility. I prefer to focus on what to do and not on what others should not do.

We can’t keep increasing energy use – Yes we can

We can’t keep using nuclear power – Yes we can

We can’t keep using gas – Yes we can

We can’t keep burning coal – Yes we can

We can’t burn fossil fuels – Yes we can

We can’t feed the world’s population – Yes we can

We can’t eliminate war – Yes we can

We can’t eradicate poverty – Yes we can

We can’t fight disease – Yes we can

We can’t maintain growth – Yes we can

We can’t use gene modified crops – Yes we can

We can’t use stem cells – Yes we can

We can’t adapt – Yes we can

We can’t depend upon human ingenuity – Yes we can

Without change there is no time and all is stasis and dead. The essence of humanity lies in meeting the challenges of change and not in futile attempts to stop change.

Green is also the colour of decay.

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Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Politics | 1 Comment »

Cameron’s War: Syria + Sarin = Iraq + WMD?

April 27, 2013

The war in Iraq is over. Everybody is pulling out of Afghanistan.

That a state of violent chaos continues in these countries is really of no consequence. But the subsequent consumption of weapons and ammunition by the US and the UK and in Nato will be a little too low and a growth in this consumption is something to be desired. The Libyan escapade was far too short and too limited in scope to contribute much to the consumption of materials and to the coffers of the weapons industry. And a vigorous and profitable weapons industry does require that that consumption should grow and not just be maintained or  – god forbid – be allowed to decline.

The weapons industry needs a new war. After all if the existing weapons and ammunition don’t get used up how can one sell any more in these times of financial cut-backs. France has Mali. But the US and the UK desperately need a new war. The US needs a new war for economic reasons.

Washington Post: As U.S. wars end, drop in spending hurts economy. A surprising 11.5 percent annualized drop in military spending is holding back the economic recovery, …

Obama would like to leave office having won a war of his own. Bush’s war on terror is a little unsatisfactory since it can never be won and it is not something Obama has created himself. Getting Osama provided little profit for the weapons industry. Cameron needs a new war for purely domestic reasons. He will have to face a new election in 2015. He needs to recreate his own image –  to try and live up to the heroic legacies of Winston Churchill in WW2, Margaret Thatcher in The Falklands and of Tony Blair in Iraq. Once upon a time, wars were declared when there was a genuine belief that no other options were available and a clear enemy could be defined. Bush and Blair (and Howard) and the neo-cons changed all that. They realised that the reasons for a desirable war could always be manufactured. Dossiers could be “sexed up” to invent enemies and provide evidence of their evil doings. Of course the “enemy” needed to be relatively weak so that a “victory” would not be jeopardised but sufficiently strong so that both air and ground forces could consume their equipment. Later if anybody found out that the reasons to go to war had been manufactured, they could just blame faulty intelligence.

It could be happening again in Syria. Cameron really needs to reinvent himself and if it takes a war to do that – then so be it. To just follow in the footsteps of “Slimy Tony” is a little demeaning, so this time the evidence for Syria and Sarin gas will have to be manufactured much more carefully than for Iraq and WMD.

BBC: The US president said there was “some evidence that chemical weapons have been used on the population in Syria, these are preliminary assessments, they’re based on our intelligence gathering.

“We have varying degrees of confidence about the actual use, there’s a range of questions about how, when, where these weapons have been used,” he said.

Mr Obama insisted more evidence was still needed and that there would be a “vigorous investigation”.

But proof of their use would be a “game changer”, he said.

“Horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law.

“All of us, not just the United States, but around the world, have to recognise how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations,” he said.

….. Earlier Mr Cameron told the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson: “I choose my words carefully, but what I see does look very much like a war crime is being committed in our world, at this time, by the Syrian government.”

War has become just another tool of economic stimulus and for building the images of the war-leaders.

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Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Syria, UK, US, War | 1 Comment »

“Irreproducible results and spurious claims” in neuroscience

April 26, 2013

The practice of science in today’s “publish or die” world together with the headlong pursuit of funding leaves me somewhat cynical.

My gut feeling has always been that it is the “social sciences” which are plagued most by the “irreproducible study” sickness but it seems to be prevalent across many more disciplines than I would have thought. Poor studies in neuroscience – it would seem – are followed by “meta-studies” to summarise the poor studies and are in turn followed by analysis to prove that the studies are not significant. And poor studies with irreproducible results would seem to be the norm and not the exception.

Gary Stix blogs at The Scientific American:

Brain Lobes : image Scientific American

New Study: Neuroscience Research Gets an “F” for Reliability

Brain studies are  the current darling of the sciences, research capable of garnering  tens or even hundreds of millions in new funding for ambitious new projects, the kind of money that was once reserved only for big physics projects.

Except the house of neuroscience, which attracts tens of thousands of attendees each year to the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, may be built on a foundation of clay. Those are the implications of an analysis published online  April 10 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, which questions the reliability of much of the research in the field.

The study—led by researchers at the University of Bristol—looked at 48 neuroscience meta-analyses (studies of studies) from 2011 and found that their statistical power reaches only 21 percent, meaning that there is only about a one in five chance that any effect being investigated by the researchers—whether a compound acts as an anti-depressant in rat brains, for instance—will be discovered. Anything that does turn up, moreover, is more likely to be false. …..

John Ioannidis of Stanford University School of Medicine, says ….. “Neuroscience has tremendous potential and it is a very exciting field. However, if it continues to operate with very small studies, its results may not be as credible as one would wish. A combination of small studies with the high popularity of a highly-funded, bandwagon-topic is a high-risk combination and may lead to a lot of irreproducible results and spurious claims for discoveries that are out of proportion.”

Update: Moses Chao, a former president of the Society for Neuroscience and a professor of cell biology at New York University Medical School, got back to me with a comment after I posted the blog, which is excerpted here:

“I agree that many published papers in neuroscience  are based upon small effects or changes.  One issue is that many studies have not been blinded.  There have been numerous reports in my field which have not been reproduced, some dealing with small molecule receptor agonists.  This has set back progress.  The lack of reproducibility is one of the reasons that pharmaceutical companies have reduced their effort in neuroscience research. But irreproducibility also applies to other fields, such as cancer…

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“Gender neutrality” idiocy in Sweden

April 26, 2013

This is Sweden — (of course) where “gender neutrality” is a religion which transcends realities. Kill the inequality by enshrining the inequality. Vive la différence!

It seems to me that those lacking in intelligence often try to compensate by jumping onto some “politically correct” bandwagon without realising quite how illogical or irrational or ludicrous their pronouncements are. I suppose I am a little square but I take the position that being stupid may be genetic but intentionally displaying that stupidity is the height of obscenity.

I wonder if this “warrior for gender neutrality” – a certain Camille Trombetti –  has at least the intelligence to realise that she has just managed to define a new third gender of transsexual  “freaks” who need to be separated from other “normal” people.

Oh well! I suppose even these mentally disadvantaged must be protected in a caring and compassionate society.

The Local (SE): A Stockholm high school is set to open a third changing room for transsexual pupils and those who don’t want to define themselves as being male or female, a move believed to be the first of its kind in the country.

“It’s for people who aren’t comfortable being divided into gender stereotypes,” Camille Trombetti, who sits on the student council at Södra Latin gymnasium, told The Local. 
She said management at the central Stockholm high school at first welcomed the idea. 
“They were very positive and welcoming but we had to figure out how to do it practically,” said Trombetti, who underlined that the student council has long pushed to expand the rights of LGBT students.

How do they plan to identify who can use the new changing room? The next step could be to ensure that all such “freaks” be registered and bear a clearly visible identifying symbol – a yellow star perhaps.

Or why not have separate changing rooms for

  • women,
  • gay women,
  • women who would like to be men,
  • men who would like to be women,
  • gay men and
  • men.

Would that cover everybody to achieve “gender parity”?

And what should we do about short people?

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Too many coincidences? 70 feared dead in Waco explosion after Boston marathon bombs

April 18, 2013

April 18th today.

Update 2! The Waco blast is more likely to have resulted from an industrial fire. Coincidences do happen.

A case of cum hoc ergo propter hoc perhaps.

Update! Upto 70 15 feared dead

=============================

The name “Waco” had not entered my consciousness for many, many years until a TV commentator brought it up after the Boston Marathon bombs on April 15th. He pointed out that it was close to the 20th anniversary of  the Waco siege ending (April 19th  1993) and the 18th anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing (April 19th, 1995) and that it was Patriots Day and Income Tax day and that some form of anti-government, domestic, fanatic, loony-right group could be implicated.

Two letters containing ricin have also been intercepted (one to a Senator and one to the President) but the previous ricin laters were sent in 2003 and 2004 by a “Fallen Angel” – but not in April. Fallen Angel was never caught.

It was all pure speculation  and I dismissed it as yet another “conspiracy theory” (though there are so many of these, that statistics says that some few of these probably must be true).

But I woke up this morning to news reports about a massive explosion at a fertiliser factory in (or near) Waco and that another explosion was expected and that 70 people were feared dead. Fertiliser plants are no strangers to explosions  and “powder” borne explosions can be particularly devastating, and yet … .

To have “Waco” enter my consciousness twice in just 3 days seems weird – and my clear perception is that this is too much of a coincidence:

News.com.au: 

  • Explosion at fertiliser plant north of Waco,Texas
  • Up to 70 people believed to have died  
  • Several people, including children, trapped in buildings

The grim death toll was given by a senior doctor at West hospital following the blast, and reported by local station KHTX, but has yet to be confirmed by other officials.

While West’s Emergency Medical Services Director Dr George Smith was cited as saying as many as 60 or 70 people died, doctors at Hillcrest Medical Centre in Waco said none of the 66 injured taken there had died.

Babies and the elderly are among those injured in the blast, with homes within a four-block radius of the fertiliser plant flattened and several more on fire.

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Corruption is rife among municipal politicians and officials – believe Swedes

April 9, 2013

The Swedish Ministry of Finance publishes a report today by their Expert Group on Public Finance which shows that every other Swede suspects that corruption is widespread among municipal politicians and officials. Unlike other parts of the EU, in Sweden local politicians and officials are suspected far more than at national level and around 60% believe that cronyism, bribery and nepotism are common at the municipal level. The study was set up partly in reaction to the Gothenburg corruption scandal.

The report by the expert group consisting of Prof. Anders Bergh, Lund School of Economics, Prof. Gissur Erlingsson, Linköping University, Prof. Mats Sjölin, Linne University and  Richard Öhrvall, Institute of Industrial Research, is published today. The report proposes a system of random independent audits and that information available to the public under transparency regulations must be much more understandable.

I don’t think that the public perception presented here is that far from reality.

Dagens Nyheter: 

Our central proposal for action is for a system of annual external audits of financial statements of a number of randomly selected municipalities. We also suggest that municipal finances disclosures shall be made accessible and that citizens who suspect fraud should be able to request external review of the municipality.

The legal aftermath of the corruption scandal in Gothenburg has now been running for two years. Despite some convictions, it is clear that morally reprehensible behavior does not necessarily lead to prosecution or heavy penalties. The Gothenburg scandal fits well into the general pattern.

In the new report presented today, we argue that corruption problems in Swedish municipalities are in an ethically gray area that does not fall clearly within narrow legal definitions. Corruption is a special case of abuse of power where politicians and officials benefit themselves or their relatives at taxpayers’ expense. Precisely because the boundaries are not clear, it is important that we do not rely only on the law to counter the problems. A positive side effect of the Gothenburg scandal is that the discussion about what we should expect from our elected officials and civil servants seems to have been established on the political agenda. ….. 

….. It is difficult to say if the scandals are exceptions to the image of Sweden as free from corruption problems or is the tip of an iceberg. More newspaper articles, more prosecutions and convictions does not necessarily mean that corruption has become more common. But when more people perceive widespread corruption problems it damages the credibility of democracy. Here Sweden differs from the other Nordic countries: Compared with Denmark, Finland and Norway,  Swedes distrust the honesty of public officials to a much greater extent. Studies show that 9 out of 10 Swedes believe that public officialsbehaviour depends on personal contacts, a remarkably high figure by international standards. The pattern is repeated in several studies. ….. 

Transparency principles are well established in Swedish government. In many municipalities  however, significant parts are run as businesses in corporate form, which often leads to ambiguities of the status of Freedom Of Information principles. Nor is it sufficient that the documents may be requested by anyone. To combat corruption documents must be understandable and encourage reviews and comparisons  with other municipalities. Many municipalities use information technology inspired by the trend in open data. But it rarely occurs in a way that makes it easier for citizens, researchers and journalists to examine, for example, how the municipal councils are using their money, or what municipalities pay for various construction projects. ….

….. An analysis of, say, a dozen municipalities annually may not lead to new scandal revelations. But the audit is a strong reason to avoid precisely the kind of behavior that would be considered problematic if it was discovered. ….

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