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Wayne Kondro and Paul Hébert advocate establishing a central agency in Canada to deal with scientific misconduct.1 We propose a set of preventive procedures to enhance research integrity. Researchers should consider the US Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002,2 which was enacted following several corporate accounting scandals. Although some claim that the Sarbanes–Oxley Act is intrusive, expensive and heavy-handed, it has proven useful for preventing accounting fraud.3 We believe that its provisions can also be applied to scientific research in 4 ways.
First, the legislation requires companies to have a complete set of internal controls. Research organizations should develop internal depositories for all data and should document the processes, analytic procedures and research methodologies their researchers use; all of the resulting material should be audited by external bodies.
Second, companies are required to have corporate officers who are personally responsible for the accuracy of financial statements. In a similar way, each research organization should have a designated “accountable scientist” responsible for research integrity.
Third, generally accepted auditing standards specify the requirements for assessing a company's financial statements.4 Similar standards are needed for the peer review process, which currently varies widely. Furthermore, the peer review process should be accredited. This would include assessing the performance of peer reviewers with blinded reviews of specially prepared articles. For instance, the Proficiency Testing Program for Mineral Analysis Laboratories offers a means by which laboratories can assess their performance independently of internal quality control.5
Finally, the requirement for internal financial controls prevents fraudulent transactions. Plagiarism is a related issue. International systems to detect scientific plagiarism could be rapidly implemented by using as a template the automated systems presently used by colleges and universities to detect plagiarism in student assignments.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: None declared.