Doctored!

Theus stringently monitors scientific practice and even has an Office of Research Integrity to track adherence to scientific ethics. Yet, a third of practising American scientists indulge in malpractices in their work .

This was revealed in a study conducted among 3,200 us scientists by the not-for-profit HealthPartners Research Foundation, Minnesota. 33 per cent of the subjects confessed to different kinds of misconduct -- from claiming credit for someone else's work to fiddling with research results. While all denied falsifying data outright, an alarming 15 per cent of the scientists surveyed said they had changed the design, methods, even results of a study -- under pressure from a financial sponsor. Seven per cent owned up to ignoring "minor" rules, put in place to protect human subjects. And six per cent failed to report data contradicting their own previous work.

Over to India

The scientific scandal in the us makes one wonder if India has an equivalent mechanism to spot scientific fraud. Two years ago, a physics professor and his student in Kumaon University were found to have plagiarised the published work of a well- known physicist from Stanford University. The gigantic fossil fraud in Punjab University, during the nineties, was another instance. "Plagiarism is a quick route to scientific success; data fabrication is another deplorable practice adopted by unscrupulous climbers in science," said P Balaram, director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in a recent editorial in Current Science.

As the pressures within the scientific community grow, there is a greater incidence of unethical practices. Balaram points out that even students in India, preparing for the doctoral life in a western university, manage to obtain publishable results from just a couple of months of "research experience".

"Scientific frauds the world over are quite similar," says N Raghuram, of Society for Scientific Values, a small organisation raising awareness about hoaxes in scientific research.

For the hard working researcher, however, it's not an easy route. Even the rare whistleblower on incidents of plagiarism, nepotism and deviant behaviour has usually risked his or her academic future by opening up.