Our second major objection relates to the contemplation of a government presence in and audit of a research institution's mechanisms for codifying and enforcing research practices. We have two principal reasons for opposing this proposal. First, the preparation, submission, review and then debate with the reviewing agency of the proposed assurances will add a new burden of administrative overhead costs. At a time when the major problem facing the biomedical research community is that federal funding is now inadequate to support unprecedented opportunities for research advances and threatens to be even more inadequate in the near future, we believe that inappropriate additional oversight requirements are intolerable. Furthermore, we have no assurance that the auditors and reviewers of institutional definitions and procedures concerning research misconduct will be unbiased or, for that matter, wise.
Research institutions differ considerably in their mission and emphasis.
We believe that this diversity leads to different but effective mechanisms for encouraging and enforcing responsible practices for research suitable for particular research settings. Review and audit by individuals distant from the culture of a particular research program raise the specter of ideological micro management. The style and conduct of science change as often and as radically as the substance of science. Accommodation to these changes, not necessarily easy or pain-free, occurs best in the medium and the marketplace where science is done, not according to central planning. It is as if we wanted to record in writing the natural course of an excited conversation among several persons all speaking simultaneously among themselves and each clamoring to make himself heard, yet which nevertheless permitted a consensus to crystallize.