Internal inquiries set up to look into alleged misdeeds of any organisation always have a vested interest in protecting the organisation. Even those which have “independent members” but who are “hired” by the organisation are never truly independent. But what is often forgotten is that no internal inquiry about wrong-doing can ever in fact prove innocence by proving the negative – that wrong-doing did not take place. The only two options that are open as conclusions are that “wrong-doing did take place” or “no evidence of wrong-doing was found”. The latter is not a declaration of innocence.
Internal inquiries are usually the result of specific allegations and such inquiries are established mainly as a political ploy and to deflect criticism. Most such inquiries take the default position as being that no wrong-doing has occurred and require wrong-doing to be proven. But this is exactly the opposite of what they ought to be doing. They should – and maybe this should be mandatory for all internal inquiries – use the null hypothesis “that the alleged wrong-doing did take place” and the task is to see if there is evidence that this hypothesis is false. The presumption, I think must be that of guilt and cannot take the comfortable and rather cozy position of presumed innocence. Especially so in cases of alleged scientific misconduct. The onus should be on the impugned researcher to demonstrate the integrity of his evidence or data or images and not the other way around.
And therefore I take the findings of this internal inquiry conducted by the US Department of the Interior about alleged misconduct with a very large bushel of salt. Ironically the complaint was made by their own Integrity Officer. And considering that they have introduced new policies about integrity and have thereafter rejected all allegations of misconduct, it could be thought that the new standards are more about protecting the organisation rather than of protecting integrity.
The U.S. Department of the Interior has rejected complaints of scientific misconduct made by its former scientific integrity officer, who accused the department of skewing information in favor removing dams on the Klamath River.
A panel hired by the department did not agree with Paul Houser’s claims that officials falsified scientific materials and circumvented policy on scientific integrity to garner public support for dam removal.
Houser filed a complaint last year, claiming a press release announcing the release of a draft environmental analysis cherry-picked facts to garner public support for removing four dams on the Klamath River. The press release also included a summary of key findings in the report that Houser said failed to include possible uncertainties about the information.
The panel’s report, titled “Independent evaluation of the scientific record pertaining to the allegations of Dr. Paul Houser,” says there was nothing unusual about the press release and key findings.
“It (the press release) was not intended as document on which to base a secretarial decision or to announce to the public such a decision,” says the report, which was written in August 2012, but not released to the public until this month.
Houser issued a rebuttal to the report blasting the department’s scientific integrity policy and the panel, claiming it was not independent, that its members were not qualified to investigate his claims and that the probe was inadequate. …….
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The Interior Department has a web page listing the findings from all of its closed scientific integrity cases over the past two years. The findings on the 12 complaints say they were without basis.
“We seem to be getting more and more excuses why there was no misconduct,” Ruch said.
Prior to the department’s press release being issued in September 2011, Houser took his complaints to Interior Department officials, who changed it. But two weeks after raising issues over the release, Houser was placed on probation within the department.
Houser’s position was abolished last year and he was told he was “not a good fit” for the job of scientific integrity officer, PEER said. After losing his job, Houser filed a whistleblower complaint with the government.
Houser and the government “resolved” the whistleblower complaint last year. The resolution included an agreement that neither Houser or the department would comment on it. The department’s panel did not consider Houser’s claims of retaliation during its investigation.
“If Interior’s own scientific integrity officers are not shielded from reprisal for doing their jobs, how in heaven’s name could one expect a staff scientist to push back against political shenanigans?” Ruch said.
The k2p blog 