Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

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Why cannot a concept of tort or “product liability”apply to scientists?

November 28, 2010

Cases of scientific misconduct do not seem to lead to any significant sanctions. Scientists are not subject to the codes of ethics that other professions have (even if they are not always complied with). Lawyers and doctors and engineers can be “disbarred” or otherwise forbidden from practising their professions when found guilty of incompetence or fraud.  Why then can a physicist or a chemist or a biochemist not be subject to the same professional sanctions for misconduct? Learned Institutes of Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics rarely get involved in the ethics breaches of their members. Scientists also need to be held responsible (liable) for their work and in cases of fraudulent science or misconduct, the sanctions applied need to be seen to be in balance with the extent of the offence.

There have been many cases of scientific misconduct where the offender seems to get little more than a slap on the wrist or a mild reprimand. In some cases they leave one institution and merely move to another. Their degrees are rarely revoked and they usually continue “working” or faking work in some other institution.

Retraction Watch addresses the details of the case of the fraud committed by Dr Jatinder Ahluwalia at University College London which led to the retraction of a paper in Nature.

Earlier this month, we posted an item about the retraction of a 2004Nature paper, “The large-conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channel is essential for innate immunity.” (That post was followed up with provocative comments from a researcher not affiliated with the authors, about what should happen to papers whose results can’t be replicated.)

One of the paper’s authors, Jatinder Ahluwalia, hadn’t signed the retraction, and the notice referred to “Supplementary Information” that hadn’t yet been made available. Today, University College London (UCL) posted that supplementary information, which was the report of a panel that investigated charges of research misconduct against Ahluwalia. That report fills in a lot of details about what preceded the retraction.

UCL’s investigation found that Ahluwalia:

  • falsified the results of experiments conducted by him, on UCL premises, thereby committing research fraud, as defined by paragraph 1.1.iv of the UCL Procedure for Investigating and Resolving Allegations of Misconduct in Academic Research. It was alleged that Dr Ahluwalia altered the numbering of files of research results so as to misrepresent the results of experiments conducted by him;
  • further falsified and misrepresented the results of experiments conducted by him, on UCL premises, by the use of materials other than those specified in the reports of the results of those experiments, thereby committing research fraud, as defined by paragraph 1.1.iv of the UCL Procedure for Investigating and Resolving Allegations of Misconduct in Academic Research;
  • interfered with the experiments of others so as to distort their results, thus falsifying the results of research experiments conducted by others employed by UCL on UCL premises, thereby committing research fraud, as defined in paragraph 1.1.iv of the UCL Procedure for Investigating and Resolving Allegations of Misconduct in Academic Research. It was alleged that Dr Ahluwalia deliberately contaminated chemicals used by other researchers in their experiments so as to falsify the results of those experiments, in order to conceal the falsification by him of the results of his own experiments.

Dr Ahluwalia is currently employed as a Senior Lecturer & Programme leader in BSc & MSc Pharmacology at the School of Health and Biosciences, University of East London,  Stratford Campus, Romford Road, London E15 4LZ, United Kingdom. For having committed fraud and engaged in sabotage and even though he is no longer employed by UCL, it does not seem that his behaviour has led to any significant sanctions.

Recently a Harvard University investigation found its high-profile Professor Marc Hauser guilty of 8 counts of misconduct and sent him on a year’s “book leave” and he will resume his activities next year. He does not lose tenure and his degrees are not revoked and the sanction seems relatively mild in relation to his behaviour.

The product that researchers and scientists produce is publications – mainly as papers published in scientific journals and as books. Scientific misconduct (whether plagiarism or faking data or inventing data or cherry picking data) leads occasionally to dismissals (but not always) and generally very little else. It seems to me that the concept of tort or “product liability” should be applicable to the work of scientists and researchers where their work is the result of faking data, fraud or other misconduct since it would be work that “had not been done in good faith”. Tort would apply because the ramifications of their misconduct would extend far beyond their employment contracts with their employers.

Tort  (from Wikipedia) is a wrong:

that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from criminal wrongdoing which involves a breach of a duty owed to society, and also does not include breach of contract. Tort cases may comprise such topics as auto accidents, false imprisonment, slander and libel, product liability (such as defectively designed consumer products), and environmental pollution (toxic torts).

Clearly a researcher has a civic duty to his co-workers, his department, his institution, his publishers and to the global community working in the same field. Scientific misconduct is a clear breach of these duties and any such researcher must then be both accountable and liable. Sanctions in such cases must be commensurate and seen to be commensurate with the offence. A year’s sabbatical from Harvard or merely moving across town to be employed at another university does not seem to be in balance with the weight of the misconduct.

The employment contract of a researcher with any institution no doubt has the appropriate language which allows sanctions (including dismissal) for breach of contract. However the liability of a fraudulent researcher – especially with published papers and books – goes beyond a simple breach of contract with his employer and extends to the entire community of workers in the field and even to all readers who may be influenced by the fraudulent work. For commensurate sanctions to be possible it becomes necessary for the concept of tort to be introduced and for  “product liability” to reside with the researcher whereby he can be held accountable by the entire audience his “product” is addressed to.

Authors of scientific papers and books need to be responsible and liable for their products.

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Law, Philosophy, Science | 4 Comments »

Shooting the messenger to discredit the message

November 27, 2010

From ancient times, envoys, messengers, heralds and town criers have all had to live with the risk of the messages they delivered incensing their audiences sufficiently to cause a backlash against the messenger. “Shooting the messenger” is then the metaphoric expression of this illogical but understandable lashing out against the bearer of bad news. Envoys and heralds were sometimes arrested or beheaded and sent back not just because the message was disliked but to create and transmit a new message by the action itself.

But it is only in modern times with the advent of readily available duplication (micro-film, photocopiers, magnetic tapes, electronic scanning and now cut-and-paste) and of easy dissemination across the globe (fax, computers, email and internet) that the leaking of confidential documents has come into its own. That confidential documents have always existed and will always exist is axiomatic and it is not only governments that have an interest in keeping documents secret. While the act of keeping some information secret may well be to hide some wrongdoing, it is not in itself indicative of illegality. Nevertheless the judgement that something needs to be kept secret is in itself  acknowledgement that the information would cause harm – to someone – if disclosed.

“Whistleblowing” – defined as revealing wrongdoing which is being kept secret – is now taken to be  admirable whether the wrongdoings are by politicians or governments or corporations.  Legislation is in place in many countries ostensibly to “protect” whistleblowers but is usually quite ineffective in preventing reprisals against the whistleblower. Often the legislation is intentionally ineffective and the only purpose is to project an image of “open government” but not actually to permit the disclosure of government secrets. Reprisals have often been crude and violent. In India, whistleblowers have even been killed out of hand. So-called Freedom of Information legislation also strives to maintain this balance of creating an impression of openness but where what is desired to be kept secret can be maintained secret (either by rejection of the request or by introducing delays or by deletion of sensitive information).

The messengers today are often a part of the message. Whistleblowing may have a political agenda. Whistleblowers may be political activists trying to mobilise the forces of public opinion. “Shooting the messenger” in the form of discrediting the messenger or his objectives has now come to be seen as a legitimate method of trying to discredit the message. This was attempted in the Climategate disclosures. Numerous articles were written to label the disclosure the work of a “hacker” (and therefore an illegal act) rather than that of a “leaker” (and therefore the act of an internal whistleblower). In the event the substance of the revelations carried their own weight and even so called “whitewash” enquiries carried out to downplay the substance of the revelations have not been very successful.

Logo used by Wikileaks

Wikileaks: image via Wikipedia

In October this year Wikileaks disclosed the Iraq War Logs. Governments around the world first tried to prevent the release by claiming that people would be in danger of their lives and security would be undermined. Nobody denied that the information was authentic. Once the material had been released, the objectives of the release and the people behind the release were attacked. Governments across the world cooperated to try and discredit the messages. “National Security concerns” became the common theme for the governments in the US and Australia and the UK. The Swedish authorities have accused the Wikileaks founder (Julian Assange) of rape and attempted rape in a crude and rather bizarre incident – but presumably as part of a concerted effort to prevent further revelations. But the information revealed about the number of civilians killed in Iraq and the manner of their killing can no longer be kept secret.

Now, further revelations of confidential US State Department information are expected from Wikileaks. The attacks on the messenger have started. The US government has contacted scores of other governments to try and defuse and discredit the information before it is disclosed. As the BBC writes:

The plan by whistleblower website Wikileaks to release millions more classified US documents will put lives at risk and damage national security, the state department has warned. A spokesman said it would do harm to US international relations if the leaks contained diplomatic cables.

The Pentagon said US military interests could also be damaged. The Wikileaks website said the US authorities were afraid of being held to account.

The state department spokesman, PJ Crowley, said the release of confidential communications was “harmful to our national security. It does put lives at risk. It does put national interests at risk”. Mr Crowley said that diplomatic cables involved discussions with governments and private citizens, and their release could erode trust in the US as a diplomatic partner. “They are going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world,” he said. “When this confidence is betrayed and ends up on the front pages of newspapers or lead stories on television or radio, it has an impact,” Mr Crowley said.

It is notable that when information is disclosed there is not much effort expended in denying the authenticity of the information. Instead the focus is more and more on attacking the purpose of the disclosure and on attacking the messengers. But even the most horrifying disclosures do not seem to have increased the accountability of governments or their desire to justify their behaviour. “National Security” is the new mantra they can hide behind.

But I cannot help thinking that this tendency of governments, politicians and officials increasingly to attack the messenger is ultimately due to an inability to stand up for one’s own behaviour. It boils down to a lack of courage.


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Posted in Behaviour, Corruption, Ethics | 1 Comment »

Al Gore does a U-turn and admits the obvious

November 22, 2010

From Wattsupwiththat:

Former Vice President Al Gore has admitted that his “support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was “not a good policy”, weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.”

Gore was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate mandating the use of ethanol in 1994.

From Reuters:

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”

He continues (admitting more of the obvious):

“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

He never did get a Nobel prize for his vote in 1994, so

………..  don’t make the mistake that he has had an epiphany on climate change:

Read the whole post at:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/22/gore-admits-the-obvious-us-corn-ethanol-was-not-a-good-policy/

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Posted in Business, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on Al Gore does a U-turn and admits the obvious

What did Rolls Royce know and when?

November 20, 2010

Rolls Royce have been conspicuously silent but it is now emerging from the airlines that Rolls Royce knew something was amiss with the older versions of the Trent 900 long before the engine failure on QF32 on November 4th. The indications are that they had serious doubts about the unmodified engines by May this year – and perhaps even earlier.

I posted my assessments about this on November 14th and 15th.

Did Rolls Royce know about the risk for a Trent 900 failure before the Qantas accident?

Problem with Trent 900 was known before accident and raises ethical questions

From an AP report via Yahoo Finance

Rolls-Royce modified a problematic section on new models of its engine for the world’s largest jetliner months before one caught fire and blew apart over Indonesia, a Lufthansa spokesman said Thursday.

The chief executive of Qantas, meanwhile, said Rolls-Royce had made modifications to the Trent 900 engine without telling the airline or Airbus, which makes the A380 superjumbo.

The officials’ remarks were the strongest indication yet that Rolls-Royce had addressed a defect in new models of the engine while allowing Airbus A380 superjumbos to continue flying with unmodified older models.

Lufthansa’s first A380, delivered by Airbus on May 19, had three newer versions of the Trent 900 engine and one older version, airline spokesman Thomas Jachnow said.

“When we got our first aircraft it was curious that one was from an older one and three were totally new from the production line,” Jachnow said. “I think this is more or less the cusp where the old to new happened.”

The Daily Telegraph carries a similar story:

The two airlines said Rolls had not informed them about the changes to the Trent 900, although sources close to the industry played down the modifications as “continuous improvements” and said reports that the changes related to the part that caused the oil leak on the Qantas A380 were “plain wrong”.

Rolls shares fell 11½, or 2pc, to 592p.

Investors are wary that the incident could cost Rolls customers. It is understood there are 22 A380s – bought by Qatar Airways, Kingfisher, Etihad and Air Austral – which are yet to decide whether to use the Trent 900 or a rival made by GE and Pratt & Whitney.

According to Alan Joyce, Qantas chief executive, up to 40 engines could be replaced. Mr Joyce also claimed that Rolls had already been changing the engine. “Rolls-Royce have gone and modified certain parts of this engine,” he stated. “If this was significant and was known to be significant, we would have liked to have known about that. We and Airbus weren’t aware of it. But it depends on what the purpose of modifications were for. It doesn’t look like it’s a significant modification, but it is a modification that has an impact on how the engines are performing.”

A Lufthansa spokesman said it had noticed differences in newer versions of the Trent 900 it had been sent.

In addition to all their technical and logistic issues, Rolls Royce now need to urgently address their loss of credibility and provide detailed answers to:

What did Rolls Royce know and when did they know it?


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Now Wall Street to crack down on insider trading

November 20, 2010

Two days after the Tokyo Stock Exchange attacked the “rampant” insider trading prevalent in Japan, US federal authorities after a three-year investigation, “are preparing insider-trading charges against consultants, investment bankers, hedge-fund and mutual-fund traders and analysts across the nation” according to the Wall Street Journal. Where Tokyo calls it “rampant” the US calls it “vast” and “pervasive”.

The criminal and civil probes, which authorities say could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation, are examining whether multiple insider-trading rings reaped illegal profits totaling tens of millions of dollars, the people say. Some charges could be brought before year-end, they say.

The investigations, if they bear fruit, have the potential to expose a culture of pervasive insider trading in U.S. financial markets, including new ways non-public information is passed to traders through experts tied to specific industries or companies, federal authorities say.

Among the expert networks whose consultants are being examined, the people say, is Primary Global Research LLC, a Mountain View, Calif., firm that connects experts with investors seeking information in the technology, health-care and other industries. “I have no comment on that,” said Phani Kumar Saripella, Primary Global’s chief operating officer. Primary’s chief executive and chief operating officers previously worked at Intel Corp., according to its website.

In another aspect of the probes, prosecutors and regulators are examining whether Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bankers leaked information about transactions, including health-care mergers, in ways that benefited certain investors, the people say. Goldman declined to comment.

Independent analysts and research boutiques also are being examined. John Kinnucan, a principal at Broadband Research LLC in Portland, Ore., sent an email on Oct. 26 to roughly 20 hedge-fund and mutual-fund clients telling of a visit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Today two fresh faced eager beavers from the FBI showed up unannounced (obviously) on my doorstep thoroughly convinced that my clients have been trading on copious inside information,” the email said. “(They obviously have been recording my cell phone conversations for quite some time, with what motivation I have no idea.) We obviously beg to differ, so have therefore declined the young gentleman’s gracious offer to wear a wire and therefore ensnare you in their devious web.”

The investigations have been conducted by federal prosecutors in New York, the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Representatives of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI and the SEC declined to comment.

Another aspect of the probe is an examination of whether traders at a number of hedge funds and trading firms, including First New York Securities LLC, improperly gained nonpublic information about pending health-care, technology and other merger deals, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Read the article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704170404575624831742191288.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

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Rampant insider trading at Tokyo Stock Exchange

November 19, 2010
The main trading room of the Tokyo Stock Excha...

Tokyo Stock Exchange: image via Wikipedia

That insider training is endemic at all major stock exchanges is a modern-day legend. Evidential proof of insider trading is also notoriously difficult. Regulators are usually more concerned about the more “sexy” malfeasance a la Enron or a Madoff but usually long after the event and where recovery of losses is insignificant (Madoff caused 65 billion of losses and auction of his personal possessions by US Marshalls raised just 2 million dollars). If I am a little cynical it is because the actual creation and growth of real wealth (by actually making things that are wanted or providing real services that are needed) seems to be less important and less appreciated than the inflating of values (by creation of bubbles) and redistributing the artificially created “wealth” by “smart” methods.

Many of the statements and actions of the regulators are mainly for public relations purposes and sometimes lead to a few high-profile prosecutions. It is very rare for any small investors to recover what they may have lost as a consequence of fraud. Nevertheless it is always good to see the regulators have some success. Asahi News reports that

Financial authorities are taking action to prevent what has been embarrassingly described as “rampant” insider trading through short selling on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC) is looking into allegations of insider trading of certain stocks on the TSE, but declined to disclose the issues or amount traded. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) and the TSE, meanwhile, are considering tighter rules on short selling.

“We hear from overseas investors that insider trading is rampant in Japan. It’s a grave issue,” a senior TSE official said. In short selling, investors borrow shares from brokerages or stockholders under expectations the price will drop. They sell them and buy them back for a profit after the price drops, returning the same number of shares to the lender.

Insider trading suspicions have been raised over the public stock offerings by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), Nippon Sheet Glass Co. and INPEX Corp., which were announced between July and September. The stock prices of all three firms plunged before the announcements of their public stock offerings.

TEPCO, for example, made public it would raise 550 billion yen ($6.6 billion) on Sept. 29 at 4:30 p.m.–after the close of trading. Earlier in the day, however, large volumes of TEPCO stock, six to 10 times more than usual, were traded mainly through short selling, with the issue closing 7.8 percent lower than the previous day. Likewise, there was a surge in short sales of Nippon Sheet Glass Co. and INPEX Corp. shares, causing the prices of both stocks to fall just before the companies announced their capital increase plans.

Companies issue public stock offerings to secure funds from a large number of unspecified investors by issuing new shares. Because it increases the total number of the company’s shares, the value per share drops, leading to lower stock prices in the short run. “I’m sure information got out beforehand,” a market source said about the recent cases. “Foreign hedge funds sold in large volumes.” These suspicions are nothing new. “Often, after receiving many inquiries in the morning from foreign investment banks on how many shares of a particular stock we have, we find a capital increase announcement by the company. There was such an incident just recently,” said a senior official at a securities company. An SESC official said: “If we do nothing about such practices, we could lose credibility of Japanese markets. If there are allegations, we intend to investigate and crack down on them.” One apparent source of inside information is a “demand survey” on institutional investors conducted in advance by brokerages that handle public stock offerings. The survey is intended to gauge the enthusiasm of institutional investors to see if the capital increase plan would go well. But an SESC official said, “People who got the information beforehand could abuse it.”

The SESC has already taken action. Following the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group’s issue of about 300 billion yen worth of preferred stock in 2003, the SESC revealed in 2004 and 2006 that employees of investment corporations in Singapore and Britain had been involved in illegal trading of the shares, using information they obtained beforehand. But such investigations take time because the SESC needs to exchange information with overseas regulatory authorities. The investigation involving Singapore spanned a year and a half. The one concerning the British investment corporation required three and a half years.

Both the FSA and the TSE are considering limiting short selling for a defined period after an announcement of a capital increase–until the issue price of the new stock is determined. Under a U.S. regulation introduced in the late 1990s, investors who conducted short selling within five business days before the issue price is set are prohibited from buying new shares issued through a capital increase.

“A (regulation) system has been established in the Untied States, but apparently not in Europe. We need to look into the background, and it will take some time before we reach a conclusion,” a senior FSA official said.

 

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Posted in Behaviour, Business, Ethics, Fraud | 1 Comment »

Former head of Chinese Nuclear corporation sentenced to life for corruption

November 19, 2010

Kang Rixin: photo china-defense-mashup.com

In August 2009 China National Nuclear Corporation’s head Kang Rixin (born 1953), was suspended and put under investigation for misusing $260 million that was earmarked for the construction of three nuclear plants and allegedly used for playing the stock market sustaining heavy losses. Kang Rixin was also accused of accepting bribes of several million dollars of corrupt payments from Areva, a leading French nuclear engineering company.

Sun Qin was appointed President to replace the suspended Kang Rixin.

Today Xinhua reports

that a Chinese court sentenced Kang Rixin, a former head of Chinese nuclear giant China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), to life imprisonment Friday for corruption and accepting almost one million U.S. dollars in bribes. Kang, CNNC’s former general manager, was also deprived of his political rights for life and had his personal assets confiscated, a statement from the Beijing No.1 intermediary court said.

Kang, 57, was convicted of having abused his power to enable others to profit. He accepted bribes totaling 6.6 million yuan (970,000 U.S. dollars) between 2004 and 2009. The sentence was lighter because Kang cooperated with investigators and returned all his ill-gotten gains.

Kang became a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in October 2007. He was stripped of his post in and membership of the CPC for “serious violations of the law and discipline breaches” in December 2009.

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Belated action on scientific misconduct in India

November 18, 2010

The Calcutta Telegraph carries the sordid story of scientific fraud, establishment denial, paper retractions and finally establishment acceptance of the misconduct.

The Gopal Kundu controversy

A controversy erupted in National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune in 2006 when an anonymous mail alleged that the authors (H. Rangaswami and Colleagues from the group of Dr. Gopal Kundu) may have misrepresented data in a paper published in Journal of Biological Chemistry. The allegation was that they had rehashed the same set of data which they had published earlier. An internal committee of the NCCS advised the authors to take back their paper, however an independent committee led by G. Padmanabhan, a former director of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, concluded that there was no manipulation in the data. This led to some heated debate between Indian Scientists with several viewpoints being presented. On 23 February 2007, the Journal of Biological Chemistry withdrew the paper amid allegations of data manipulation. The authors still maintain that the two papers used different set of data though similar experiments.

However the panel set up was not as independent as claimed. Its members were chosen by the Government and – as often when things get politicised in India – they returned a “politically correct” white-wash. But now as The Telegraph reports:

An apex association of Indian scientists today debarred for three years a senior biologist who had been accused of plagiarism by international scientific journals three years ago but was exonerated by a government panel of top scientists.

The unprecedented action by the Bangalore-based Indian Academy of Sciences, after an internal investigation by its ethics committee, appears to vindicate claims by some scientists that the government-appointed panel had tried to shield the accused.

At its annual meeting in Goa today, the academy endorsed the decision by its ethics committee (which was accepted by the academy’s council in July) and barred Gopal Kundu from participating in the academy’s activities for three years, beginning August 2010.

Nor can Kundu, a research scientist at Pune’s National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), propose any candidates for fellowship of the academy during this period.

The prestigious US-based Journal of Biological Chemistry(JBC) had in February 2007 withdrawn a research paper by Kundu, accusing him of reusing images he had published in an earlier paper.

Another journal, Glycoconjugates Journal, too, had withdrawn a paper by Kundu because it had substantial similarities with a paper he had himself published previously in the JBC.

Better late than never but what is more important is the relatively low value given to ethics by the scientific establishment. Ethics, misconduct and scientific rigour can always be trumped by political correctness. Rahul Siddharthan writes in his excellent post:

An internal investigation at Kundu’s institution found him guilty of misrepresenting data, but a subsequent investigation by an external committee of six eminent scientists exonerated him completely, declaring themselves entirely satisfied that the images, though visually similar, were “indeed different.” I subsequently made my own analysis and published it in Current Science, who followed it with a response from G Padmanaban, the head of the committee that exonerated Kundu.

………

To me, this case is not really about Kundu. It is about our complete lack of appreciation of scientific ethics, and our tendency to “close ranks” when trouble arrives. To succumb to this tendency even after an international journal has conducted its own investigation and made its own decision, and to justify it with a paltry two-page report, merely makes us a laughing-stock.

So it is a good thing that the Academy has, belatedly, tried to correct this.

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Rolls Royce scrambling to find Trent 900 replacement engines

November 17, 2010
Mechanic working on a Rolls Royce Trent 900 en...

Trent 900: image via Wikipedia

Rolls Royce is asking Airbus to return new engines destined for new aircraft so that they can be supplied to Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa for their operations. This in turn is having a knock-on effect on future A380 deliveries.

In the meantime Qantas seems to be having a rash of minor issues which have caused aircraft to return after cockpit fires, bird hits and lightning strikes.

The European Regulator (EASA) has not commented on why they relaxed their Airworthiness Directive and whether this was done in response to representations from Rolls Royce. The engine maker is also silent on whether they knew of the Trent 900 problem and the risk for an engine fire prior to the uncontained explosion of an engine on QF32.

Reuters reports on the logistics problems faced by Rolls Royce:

British enginemaker Rolls-Royce has asked Airbus to return Trent 900 engines from A380 superjumbo production lines so they can be used to replace faulty ones on aircraft already in service.

The Airbus A380 — the world’s largest passenger aircraft with an average list price of about $350 million — has been hit by safety concerns after a Rolls-Royce engine partly disintegrated mid-flight, forcing a fully laden Qantas plane to make an emergency landing in Singapore on Nov 4.

Rolls-Royce’s move could be another blow to a much-delayed A380 program as Airbus was scheduled to deliver over a dozen Rolls-Royce-powered A380s — primarily to Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Lufthansa by the end of next year.

“Until this problem is fully resolved I think the situation with the delivery of A380 to customers … will be in jeopardy,” Standard & Poor’s analyst Sukhor Yusof said. But both Singapore Airlines and Qantas, with a combined 22 A380s still to be delivered, said on Tuesday they had not been informed of any delivery delays.

Airlines using the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines have been ordered by European aviation authorities to undertake major tests, which analysts said were so strenuous they would likely disrupt schedules.

“I can confirm that Rolls-Royce is arranging to supply some new engines from the production line to replace some engines removed from the serviced aircraft,” an Airbus spokesman in Singapore said, without saying which airlines would receive those engines.

Shares in Rolls-Royce, which on Friday said fixing the fault would lead to only slightly slower profit growth, have suffered during its probe and were 0.2 percent down at 596.50 pence by 1130 GMT on Tuesday, around 9 percent below their last trade before the Qantas incident. Airbus parent EADS has lost 5 percent since the incident and hit a one-month low on Monday. Its shares were 1.3 percent down at 17.78 euros. Qantas is down 4.9 percent since the incident. Airbus said last week that the problem with the Rolls-Royce engine could have an impact on its earnings and delivery target for 2011 but did not give details, and airlines contacted on Tuesday had no knowledge of delivery timetable changes.

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US scientists more likely to publish fake research

November 16, 2010

A new on-line paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics has studied the PubMed database for all scientific research papers that had been retracted between 2000 and 2010.

Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud? by R Grant Steen J Med Ethics doi:10.1136/jme.2010.038125

Abstract

Background Papers retracted for fraud (data fabrication or data falsification) may represent a deliberate effort to deceive, a motivation fundamentally different from papers retracted for error. It is hypothesised that fraudulent authors target journals with a high impact factor (IF), have other fraudulent publications, diffuse responsibility across many co-authors, delay retracting fraudulent papers and publish from countries with a weak research infrastructure.

Methods All 788 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Data pertinent to each retracted paper were abstracted from the paper and the reasons for retraction were derived from the retraction notice and dichotomised as fraud or error. Data for each retracted article were entered in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.

Results Journal IF was higher for fraudulent papers (p<0.001). Roughly 53% of fraudulent papers were written by a first author who had written other retracted papers (‘repeat offender’), whereas only 18% of erroneous papers were written by a repeat offender (χ=88.40; p<0.0001). Fraudulent papers had more authors (p<0.001) and were retracted more slowly than erroneous papers (p<0.005). Surprisingly, there was significantly more fraud than error among retracted papers from the USA (χ2=8.71; p<0.05) compared with the rest of the world.

Conclusions This study reports evidence consistent with the ‘deliberate fraud’ hypothesis. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive. It is inferred that such behaviour is neither naïve, feckless nor inadvertent.

PhysOrg summarises the paper:

The study author searched the PubMed database for every scientific research paper that had been withdrawn—and therefore officially expunged from the public record—between 2000 and 2010. A total of 788 papers had been retracted during this period. Around three quarters of these papers had been withdrawn because of a serious error (545); the rest of the retractions were attributed to fraud (data fabrication or falsification).

The highest number of retracted papers were written by US first authors (260), accounting for a third of the total. One in three of these was attributed to fraud.

The UK, India, Japan, and China each had more than 40 papers withdrawn during the decade. Asian nations, including South Korea, accounted for 30% of retractions. Of these, one in four was attributed to fraud.

The fakes were more likely to appear in leading publications with a high “impact factor.” This is a measure of how often research is cited in other peer reviewed journals. More than half (53%) of the faked research papers had been written by a first author who was a “repeat offender.” This was the case in only one in five (18%) of the erroneous papers.

The average number of authors on all retracted papers was three, but some had 10 or more. Faked research papers were significantly more likely to have multiple authors. Each first author who was a repeat fraudster had an average of six co-authors, each of whom had had another three retractions.

“The duplicity of some authors is cause for concern,” comments the author. Retraction is the strongest sanction that can be applied to published research, but currently, “[it] is a very blunt instrument used for offences both gravely serious and trivial.”

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, Science, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »

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