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Reviewed by:
  • Research Misconduct Policy in Biomedicine: Beyond the Bad-Apple Approach by Barbara K. Redman
  • Melissa S. Anderson
Barbara K. Redman, Research Misconduct Policy in Biomedicine: Beyond the Bad-Apple Approach, MIT Press, 2013

In Research Misconduct Policy in Biomedicine: Beyond the Bad-Apple Approach, Barbara Redman recommends that policy perspectives on research misconduct extend beyond the individual wrongdoer to encompass institutional and broader contexts. She rails against what she sees as a pervasive focus on the misbehavior of individuals (bad apples) that neglects organizational and psychosocial aspects of bad conduct. Her primary targets are the misconduct policies of the U.S. federal government and research institutions. [End Page E-5]

In the U.S., research misconduct policy is grounded in the federal definition of research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (The Office of Research Integrity). The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) handles cases of misconduct in fields funded by the Public Health Service, including biomedicine. Misconduct policy and its implementation by ORI are largely oriented to misbehavior by individuals, a result, Redman says, of the “rigid and legalistic way” in which regulatory policy has evolved in the U.S. (53).

The root of the problem goes deeper, however. Redman sees in the scientific community a preference for treating those who engage in research misconduct as bad apples, a common metaphor with unfortunate implications. For example, a bad apple connotes a singularity, that is, one person who alone does something wrong. It is easy, then, to think of someone who misbehaves as fundamentally different, even pathologically different, from everyone else. Members of the research community distance themselves from the inappropriate behavior in order to maintain, by contrast, the image that they are behaving appropriately. Bad apples tend to infect adjacent fruit, so it is important to eject wrongdoers as expeditiously as possible from their research positions and, sometimes, from the scientific community.

Redman rejects the bad-apple metaphor, calling for a broader perspective on work environments and psychosocial aspects of research communities. She emphasizes the effects of work context and institutional or workgroup standards on the behavior of individuals, particularly in complex settings with ambiguous tasks and outcomes. She lists dysfunctions associated with research institutions that may be related to misbehavior, including insufficient oversight of research, stress and competition in science, inadequate standards for research, poor job prospects, high debt loads among students, and poor training in the responsible conduct of research (28-30).

Redman is not alone in urging this redirection of focus. Over the past fifteen years, research on the causes and correlates of research misconduct has examined a wide array of organizational factors. There has also been increasing interest in the psychological underpinnings of misconduct as a behavior that is responsive to environmental cues. This line of inquiry has drawn productive insights from behavioral economics.

Redman’s recommendations are scattered through the book, but they come down to three general points. First, research institutions have a responsibility for oversight and training. In the literature and the [End Page E-6] misconduct cases that she reviews, she finds evidence that institutions are not fulfilling their responsibility to maintain strong regulatory oversight of research. She recommends, for example, checks on raw data, datagathering and research procedures, particularly where trainees are involved. Oversight includes, in her view, responsibility for ensuring appropriate working conditions, workloads, and supervision of junior researchers and staff (123). Institutions must provide education in the responsible conduct of research that is appropriate to the complexities of scientific work. Such training should be grounded in the realities of how science is actually done, instead of focused on behavioral ideals. It should also attend to the emotional aspects of what can go wrong in stressful environments, so that students will be better equipped to face competition, ambiguity, and failure. Redman looks to federal regulatory structures to enforce these institutional responsibilities for oversight and training.

Second, Redman exhorts institutions and funders to come down hard on wrongdoers (150), noting that they have the power and resources to do so. In keeping with her emphasis on context, she recommends that each finding of research misconduct trigger an investigation of root causes (128). She notes that this kind of analysis...

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