Report

Considerable effort has been devoted to the task of defining research misconduct and elaborating methods for investigation of allegations of misconduct. Much less attention has been devoted, however, to the task of fostering a research environment that promotes integrity.

This report focuses on the research environment and attempts to define and describe those elements that allow and encourage unique individuals, regardless of their role in the research organization or their backgrounds on entry, to act with integrity. The committee's goal was to define the desired outcomes and set forth a set of initiatives that it believes will enhance integrity in the research environment. The committee considered approaches that can be used to ensure integrity and methods that can be used to assess the effectiveness of those efforts.

Several overarching conclusions emerged as the committee addressed the desire of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity for means to assess and track the state of integrity in the research environment:

• Attention to issues of integrity in scientific research is very important to the public, scientists, the institutions in which they work, and the scientific enterprise itself.
• No established measures for assessing integrity in the research environment exist.
• Promulgation of and adherence to policies and procedures are necessary, but they are not sufficient means to ensure the responsible conduct of research.
• There is a lack of evidence to definitively support any one way to approach the problem of promoting and evaluating research integrity.
• Education in the responsible conduct of research is critical, but if it is not done appropriately and in a creative way, it is likely to be of only modest help and may be ineffective.
• Institutional self-assessment is one promising approach to assessing and continually improving integrity in research.