Leaders of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) "strongly" objected this week to plans by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to gauge misconduct by polling 3,000 principal investigators early next year.

The ORI survey questions expand unduly on the classic definition of research misconduct – fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FF&P) – and are ambiguous and subjective, according to a November 12 letter signed by FASEB president Steven Teitelbaum and AAMC chief Jordan Cohen.

ORI is the branch of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) charged with overseeing scientific misconduct probes, and contracted with the Gallup Organization to conduct the poll as part of a larger program of research into research integrity. FASEB and AAMC made their comments as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is reviewing the proposed survey.

From the start, ORI said it would be looking not just at made-up data and stolen work, but also at issues such as fairness in collaboration and adherence to rules for dealing with humans and animals in experiments. An earlier survey of 150 schools revealed that about half of them operate with a broader understanding of misconduct than the strict definition in the Federal Research Misconduct Policy.

FASEB and AAMC want the survey to go by the book, lest results suggest the nation's laboratories are rife with wrongdoing. "This arbitrary expansion of the definition of research misconduct makes it likely that an inaccurate estimate of research misconduct will result, leaving ORI with invalid data obtained at great expense," the letter says of the Gallup survey, which is expected to cost $300,000.

ORI has no intention of confusing activities that fall within the classic FF&P definition of misconduct with other behavior by the ethically challenged, director Chris Pascal told The Scientist. But it has no intention of backing off under pressure from FASEB and AAMC, either. "We reject the notion that only study in research misconduct is appropriate," Pascal said. "We think study of other research integrity issues is important, too."

His office found some FASEB and AAMC comments valuable, the ORI chief said, and they would likely find their way into the final survey. James Wells, the Gallup research consultant designing the poll instrument, said FASEB and AAMC were looking at the seventh version of the survey. Version nine already incorporates changes that may settle some of the biomedical trade group concerns, he said. A pilot study of 200 investigators will go out after the survey instrument wins OMB approval, Wells explained. Any glitches that show up then will be resolved before the final survey goes out next year.

But OMB, a White House division, has killed earlier ORI-funded efforts to probe the mental state of investigators. Mark Davis, an Ohio sociologist and research administrator, regaled the last convocation of ORI-sponsored research integrity researchers with the results of three in-depth interviews of scientists caught cheating more than a decade ago.

The interviews were supposed to demonstrate what Davis' non-profit, Justice Research & Advocacy, Inc., would do on the second leg of a $65,000 ORI contract. The first phase of the project involved raking through closed scientific misconduct case files in an effort to shed light on why researchers cheat. The second stage, Davis hoped, would involve live phone interviews with scientists found guilty to ascertain why they risked promising careers.

"It was amazing the extent to which a couple of them opened up," Davis said. "We knew the interviews would be a virtual goldmine of information that would not only be theoretically interesting, but valuable to those who want to prevent misconduct." Phase two, however, failed to win OMB approval, even though Davis had the backing of ORI officials who were impressed with the early work.

OMB officials were unable to explain why they refused to approve the Justice Research and Advocacy interviews. Davis will be talking about his work this weekend at ORI's 2002 research integrity meeting being held in Potomac, Maryland.