“Research passports” could reduce misconduct, conference hears

The UK’s elite universities draw half of their income from research, yet nobody checks the integrity of the work, Michael Farthing, vice chancellor of Sussex University, told delegates at the World Conference on Research Integrity in Montreal on 5 to 8 May.

Farthing, professor of medicine at Sussex and vice chairman of the UK Research Integrity Office, told the conference, “Every five years the research is audited for quality. But nobody asks the question, ‘Is this high quality research also research of high integrity?’”

A report of the recent investigation into suspected research misconduct at Cardiff University’s medical school, which found that …