While recognizing the distinction between a forceful argument and misleading use of data may be difficult, knowing the difference between the pursuit of truth and outright fraud is not. The ability to recognize falsification is learned in many places outside of the laboratory and classroom. Despite pressures or temptations to act unethically, most students and postdoctoral fellows ought to be capable of making intelligent decisions regarding their own ethical conduct. There can be no abdication of responsibility. Emphasize the intrinsic value in being a solid, careful scientist rather than appearing on the cover of Cell .
Good science is itself a deterrent to fraud.
Lewis A. Chodosh graduated from the M.D.-Ph. D. Program in 1989 and is an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Engineering and Medicine at the Institute for Human Gene Therapy, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Harold Varmus, Director of the National Institutes of Health, has recently defined clinical investigation as when the investigator and the research subject are both human, alive and in the same room at the same time. On the following assumptions I argue for the importance of a broad definition of clinical investigation, even though the training and maintenance of a clinical investigator may be somewhat more expensive than the development, care and feeding of a basic researcher. My definition of clinical investigation is research of almost any kind by someone with a medical degree who has had intensive clinical experience in patient management, e.g. sufficient to achieve certification in a clinical specialty or subspecialty, and who maintains some level of connection with clinical medicine in an environment that actively encourages scholarly research.