Authors' Reply

Opinions on how to handle scientific fraud and misconduct are often one-sided. This is exemplified by the editorial(FASEB j 5:2507-2508; 1991) aswell as the article (FASEBJ 5:2512-2515; 1991), both written by Barbara C. Hansen and Kenneth D. Hansen. The very first paragraph of their article, commenting on the sanctions imposed on Galileo by “the institution’ (and thus by inference drawing a parallel to modern day affairs) had an offensive “Willie Horton” quality to it, and was a direct play to the emotions. And while it is common knowledge that institutions can be bureaucratic, selfinterested, authoritarian, power-hungry, etc., it is important to realize that in discussing fraud/misconduct in science, there are two institutions to consider: the governmental institution and the scientific institution. Unfortunately, these articles only considered the faults and problems of the former and how to avoid them. Little mention was made of problems of the latter. The authors of these two articles as well as other scientists have expressed concern for the rights of the accused, and how these have been compromised at times by the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) and Congress; however, concern for the rights of the person who may be a threat to the institution, i.e., the accuser, is rarely mentioned. Similarly, in their article the authors warn us of the apparent liberties taken in interpreting the 1986 Congressional amendment (Section 493) to the PHS Act, and as an antidote, in their editorial they suggest strongly limiting investigations of fraud to the scientific institution, with OSI playing only a peripheral role. However, this solution does not address important issues: how to achieve equity if each scientific institution can have its own set of procedures (the authors think this is important to avoid conformity, not realizing that for some issues conformity ensures fairness), how to assure that a