Watching the BBC’s detective drama Line of Duty, I thought: could the academic research community benefit from an internal affairs style anti-corruption unit? Not to police illegal behaviour in an underworld of dons and deans – but to tackle the very real problem of fraudulent research.
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Prof David Latchman, one the country’s leading research geneticists, is under investigation for scientific misconduct after being cleared of different misconduct charges in 2015. In a statement, law firm Mishcon de Reya said Latchman rejected the allegations, saying there was “no basis” for further investigation.
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This is not an isolated case. The social psychologist Dirk Smeesters gained an international research reputation and senior positions on the basis of fraudulent research. In 2007, the dean of Durham University’s business school Prof Tony Antoniou resigned over claims that he plagiarised an article and parts of his doctoral thesis. But the most prominent historical instances of fraud have been in hard science – especially medicine: Andrew Wakefield, John Darsee, and Robert Millikan who won a Nobel prize on the back of what some have argued was fraudulent science.
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