Comment

Comment by Maria De Wind on February 24, 2013 at 12:25pm

Scientific misconduct: Disciplinary action

The US Federal Office of Research Integrity would seem to play such a role bringing impartiality and transparency in its investigations. It is to its credit that, it determined that the French scientist Luc Motagnier was in fact the first to identify the AIDS virus and not the American Robert Gallo. A refreshing example of transparency and impartiality is the action taken by the Director General of CSIR, in which two scientists from one of its laboratories were punished for plagiarism in a paper published by them in an international journal. After establishing that the two scientists did indulge in an unethical practice, DGSIR dismissed one and demoted the other. Currently DGSIR has appointed the Director of a CSIR lab as the Chairman to look into the alleged falsification of data in a paper presented at an international conference abroad by a divisional head in another CSIR lab. It was unequivocally established through repeat tests ordered by the Chairman, that the results reported in the paper could not be reproduced. Reproducibility is the hallmark of scientific research. Scien-tists at these levels should be role models for their juniors to emulate and not indulge in such unethical acts themselves. DGSIR’s action to uphold scientific integrity in this case will be watched with interest by the scientific community.