The Hindu Business Line : In science, fraud is fabrication and falsification

`BREAKING NEWS' is about the ongoing investigations in a temple accountant's murder case causing much anxiety about unholy alliances, and widespread breast-beating over abrupt betrayal. Quite unusual, because accountants rarely stir interest for the common man, so even their tombstones may read quite simply, "Here lies so-and-so, below the line." However, even as forensic experts piece together bits and pieces, and sleuths pore over bank statements on the trail of blood money, it seems the time is just right for reading Horace Freeland Judson's The Great Betrayal, from Harcourt Inc (www. HarcourtBooks. com) though it is not about what we've been hearing from a seer out of sight.

Judson's book is a dissection of "the scientific body to offer an anatomy of scientific fraud that will help restore our faith" in science that is `venerable and worthy'. Whether you call accounting art or science, there is enough in the book to educate and sensitise, such as a story, before prologue, about a row of images of Zeus, called the Zanes.

These were cast in bronze, using the money collected as fines from "competitors who had cheated," informs the author. "The Zanes were lined up on pedestals along the north of the Altis, the consecrated precinct of the Olympian Zeus, and led directly to the gate of the private passage by which athletes entered the stadium: they were the last objects that met the eyes of those about to compete."

Definition of fraud is necessary before we start measuring its incidence in science, reasons Judson. The standard definition is FF&P, meaning "fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism."

Perhaps, accountants may not find much use for the third component in their regular work; and audit opinions are normally not copyrighted though however much creativity comes into play when drafting the reports.

"Fabrication is faking data entirely," explains the book. "Biologists call it `dry labbing'." Falsification relies on manipulating data, and this can take many forms such as: "picking only the favourable results, trimming off data points that seem to threaten the paper's conclusions, presenting readings barely above background levels as fully significant, combining the best part parts of two experiments into what then appears to be one, and so on." Plagiarism is a more vicious evil because it is theft of intellectual property.

Currently, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India is betting much on the newly launched peer review to impart quality to the work of the auditing profession. But science has been using peer review and refereeing as self-governance measures for the last about five decades. These are "moribund," rues the author. "They have become dispirited, often ineffectual, and in some respects corrupt, infested with politics, rife with temptation to plagiarise."

For science researchers, `overheads' have a special meaning. These are percentages added to the "basic, direct-to-the-laboratory" grants, for meeting "what are loosely termed administrative costs, from the salaries of secretaries to the travel of university presidents, from copying machines and telephone calls to the stipends paid to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the sciences to the accountants who determine these numbers - and to libraries."

There is a gripping analysis of costs incurred by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In fiscal year 2003, NIH gave $24.5 billion in extramural grants, of which a third was for overhead allowance. From NSF, $3.9 billion went to research. "As overheads support libraries, not only do print journals exploit referees, they profit by exploiting the entire system of government-sponsored research - ultimately paid for, by the taxpayer," argues Judson.

A chapter discusses the `culture of fraud' that pervades finance, churches, sports, media and science. "If the twentieth century has not been the century of fraud, it was surely the century of its exposure," notes Judson. It would be naïve to think that fraud is isolated or individual, he argues.

We know of Charles Babbage attempts to build a computer, not so much his `typology of fraud', classifying `impositions' as hoaxing, forging, trimming, and cooking. A hoax report may, thus, describe a specie that does not exist! Forgers record observations that were never made. "Trimming consists of clipping off little bits here and there," while cook achieves the `happy effect' of "promoting unity amongst discordant measures" by selecting from among observations "only those which agree, or very nearly agree." Not too different from audit queries.

Problems of peer review are dealt with in a separate chapter, which I guess should interest CAs. Another chapter is on authorship and ownership, and the associated issues of credit and IP. The last chapter is on the travails of institutions `when misconduct is charged' by a whistleblower, because "grants and contracts may be at stake, scientists' reputations and careers threatened."

Yet, Judson is hopeful: "If we are courageous enough, stoical enough, we refuse to make the intellectual sacrifice, we embrace the knowledge that knowledge is uncertain — and still we want to know." A ray of hope, that is, when bewildered by betrayals.

BooksOfAccount@TheHindu.co.in

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