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The Case of Vipul Bhrigu and the Federal Definition of Research Misconduct

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Abstract

The Office of Research Integrity found in 2011 that Vipul Bhrigu, a postdoctoral researcher who sabotaged a colleague’s research materials, was guilty of misconduct. However, I argue that this judgment is ill-considered and sets a problematic precedent for future cases. I first discuss the current federal definition of research misconduct and representative cases of research misconduct. Then, because this case recalls a debate from the 1990s over what the definition of “research misconduct” ought to be, I briefly recapitulate that history and reconsider the Bhrigu case in light of that history and in comparison to other cases involving tampering. Finally, I consider what the aim of a definition of research misconduct ought to be, and argue that the precedent set by the reasoning in this case is problematic.

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Notes

  1. The case is summarized from Maher (2010, 2011), and the case finding from the Office of Research Integrity, available at: http://ori.hhs.gov/content/case-summary-bhrigu-vipul.

  2. To view the video footage, obtained by Nature via a Freedom of Information Act request, go to: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/04/lab_sabotage_deemed_research_m_1.html.

  3. The loss of federal funding may also have at least two other effects: first, given institutions’ desire for external funding, the fact that a researcher is unable to apply for it from the federal government is a very significant problem, which could lead to someone being fired (depending on the terms of employment) or not hired; second, a federal finding labels a researcher in a very damaging way, so that even if s/he were able to secure other funding, the institution, collaborators and others may not want to work with that person.

  4. There are other ways to pursue problematic research practices. For example, it is within the purview of a corporation or an academic institution to conduct investigations and punish in ways other than the Federal Government can. I focus here on federal regulations, because my point concerns regulatory interpretation, and because the government has a larger stick to wield in its capacity to withhold federal funding. I thank an anonymous reviewer for the Journal for bringing this point to my attention.

  5. Information available at http://ori.hhs.gov/case_summary.

  6. Curiously, in one of these, the Lushington case, the charge is that he approved of the publication of articles “he knew contained significant amounts of plagiarized text” (emphasis mine), but neither Lushington nor anyone else seems to have been actually charged with the plagiarism (http://ori.hhs.gov/content/case-summary-lushington-gerald). However, only case summaries appear on the ORI website, so it is not clear exactly to what extent the summary reflects the actual charges or allegations.

  7. In the Solomon case, the charge was that Solomon “did not perform DNA sequencing… to confirm [the] identity and integrity of the cells,” and did not correct the claims of a coauthor that “the clones had been fully sequenced and were full length or longer” (http://ori.hhs.gov/content/case-summary-solomon-nicola). One might infer that the problem was falsification, but neither that term nor the terms “fabrication” or “plagiarism” is used in the case finding summary.

  8. Case summary available at: http://ori.hhs.gov/content/case-summary-bhrigu-vipul. All quotations in this paragraph are from this case summary.

  9. See Buzzelli 1993, 585 and 647 for further explanation of the case. He also says that “[f]or various reasons, this case has not been prosecuted under criminal or civil rights statutes” (585); the researcher’s home institution was also not able to conduct an investigation because they did not administer the grant.

  10. Rosner and Langlois case summaries available at: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not93-177.html. Xu case summary available at: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-04-013.html.

  11. Caruso case summary available at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-1994-04-19/html/94-9381.htm.

  12. Case summary available at: http://ori.dhhs.gov/documents/newsletters/vol3_no1.pdf on p. 1.

  13. It is also worth noting that this particular finding may not have been possible before the Diamond v. Chakrabarty case established that cell lines can be property.

  14. The word “tampering” was used in the Bhrigu case summary, but not in any of the other cited cases, and none uses the word “sabotage.”

  15. A missing piece of data here is how many instances of something like sabotage were handled by institutions without reporting to the ORI, or to the ORI without resulting in a finding. Without that, we can not really know the extent to which the Bhrigu case is an outlier.

  16. Interestingly, one of Buzzell’s concerns was that cases of sabotage or tampering, which seemed to him clearly to be research misconduct, could not be thus categorized in the absence of the “serious deviation” clause. It is worth quoting him at length: “There is actually a range of offenses that may fall under tampering. In some instances, tampering may consist of making adjustments to a colleague’s experiment without that person’s knowledge, so that bad data are obtained. It is difficult to see why falsifying one’s own data is misconduct in science but falsifying a colleague’s data is not. In other cases, the colleague’s entire apparatus may be destroyed and removed. This clearly is vandalism, but arguably there would be enough harm to research in such a situation to justify opening a case of misconduct in science. The normal penalties for vandalism would not protect the integrity of federal research funds. Similarly, a colleague’s cultures may be maliciously destroyed without the destruction of any equipment. This often could not be prosecuted as vandalism, but again I think scientists would agree that it violates ethical standards and departs from accepted practices in science.” (1993, p. 647). It would not be surprising to discover that this paper played into the ORI finding in the Bhrigu case, so closely does it anticipate it and justify a misconduct finding.

  17. I have not been able to ascertain whether this was true when Buzzelli wrote the article (he appears not to be aware of it), or whether regulations have changed since that time.

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Correspondence to Lisa M. Rasmussen.

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This paper has significantly benefitted from communications with Debra Parrish, JD.

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Rasmussen, L.M. The Case of Vipul Bhrigu and the Federal Definition of Research Misconduct. Sci Eng Ethics 20, 411–421 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-013-9459-y

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