After a string of high-profile cases, a new agreement between scientists and the people who fund them aims to usher in a new era of 'research purity'Britain's leading science institutions will be told on Monday that they will be stripped of many millions of pounds in research grants if they employ rogue researchers who fake the results of experiments,
The Independent has learnt.
The clampdown comes as retractions of scientific claims by medical journals are on course to top 500 for the first time in 2013 - having been just 20 a year in the late 1990s, when Andrew Wakefield notoriously claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism in children. In April, the UK's first researcher was jailed for falsifying data over a prolonged period.
The Government is concerned that Britain's prized second place in global research behind the US will be at threatened if more fact-fabricators are exposed. It knows that hundreds of thousands of jobs could easily go to foreign rivals if British laboratories do not keep coming up with new product ideas, to be made by major multinational companies in UK factories.
All of the country's 133 universites and colleges of higher education are being forced to sign a new Concordat for Research Integrity - having been warned by major fund providers that those who do not will be refused access to more than £10 billion in research grants funded each year by British taxpayers - and as much again from the private sector.
A spokesman for Universities UK, which chaired negotations with the grant providers, said: "From next year, universities in the UK will have to prove compliance with the research integrity concordat in order to receive research grant. They are doing this to help demonstrate to government, business, international partners and the wider public that they can continue to have confidence in the research."
Retractions of medical claims alone in 2013 - logged by the Retraction Watch blog - are certain to be more than 400, and could easily top 500. Some result from genuine mistakes, several plagiarise other scientists' work, breakthroughs that haven't been checked. But as many as one in 10 of them contain lies.
Comment: In an ideal world, most of the above would sound all fine and dandy, but in realty research science today been mostly corrupted and is beholden to vast, vested commercial interests.
Turning reality on its head right from the outset ,this article mentions the now infamous Dr Andrew Wakefield affair, where he warned of the dangers of the MMR vaccine and the links to autism in the Lancet (which initially accepted his paper with no qualms). Due to commercial pressure, corrupted science then set out in an attempt to destroy him and his reputation rather than stand up for the truth and integrity.
Read about the despicable treatment he endured below -
http://www.sott.net/article/202336-Lancet-caves-in-retracts-study-tying-MMR-vaccine-to-Autism
http://www.sott.net/article/222197-Dr-Wakefield-demands-retraction-from-BMJ-after-documents-prove-innocence-from-allegations-of-vaccine-autism-data-fraud
http://www.sott.net/article/242656-British-Court-Throws-Out-Conviction-of-Autism-Vaccine-Doctor