Home November 1998 Vol 59 No 6 Altman book review

College and Research Libraries
November 1998, Vol. 59, No. 6

Book Review

Research Misconduct: Issues, Implications, and Strategies. Eds. Ellen Altman and Peter Hernon. Greenwich, Conn.: Ablex, 1997. 206p. $73.25, cloth (ISBN 1567503403); $39.50, paper (ISBN 1567503411). LC 97-18061.

This collection of eight essays explores the uncomfortable topic of research misconduct from the perspective of its impact on libraries and librarians. Whether it is called research misconduct, academic dishonesty, or just plain fraud, the subject goes well beyond simple plagiarism and includes the intentional fabrication and falsification of scientific, medical, or academic research generally. This disconcerting phenomenon seems to be occurring with increasing frequency among professionals of the intellect, but it is not a subject that university administrators or the heads of learned societies relish discussing. To admit its existence in their own institutions or professions is to acknowledge a fundamental failure of their mission. This book shines a useful light on a very shadowy area.

The editors of the book, Ellen Altman and Peter Hernon, are its principal contributors, authoring or coauthoring all but one of the essays themselves. Hernon is a professor at Simmons College in Boston, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Academic Librarianship, and author of more than thirty books and dozens of articles. Altman has been a professor and head of the graduate library school at the University of Arizona, features editor of Public Libraries, and a member of Library Quarterly’s editorial board.

In their view, although the number of books and articles dealing with the problem of misconduct in research has grown, few writers on the subject have been concerned with the impact of false research and tainted publications on the scholarly literature; none has addressed the impact on libraries or the bibliographic process; and none has discussed whether librarians have any obligations to notify users about materials found to be bogus. This volume is intended as an “exploratory” foundation on which others, within and outside library and information science, might build.

Among its virtues, the book collects, reviews, and synopsizes in an appendix more than sixty publicly discussed cases in which scientific misconduct was determined and which involved research literature that was fabricated, falsified, or plagiarized. (Excluded are cases involving plagiarism in grant applications to the federal government, of which, according to the editor-authors, there are many.) Reports of the federal government’s Office of Research Integrity are the primary source for these data, but the government did not begin releasing the names of individuals found guilty of scientific misconduct involving federally funded grants until 1993.

Part of the research for the book was done while the editor-authors were visiting professors at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. The research included a clever (if a bit unsettling) clinical experiment in which the author-editors wrote a deliberately falsified study, containing a number of mistakes, and tested it among library school students, librarians, university deans and professors, and journal editors. The faked study, purportedly written by a new faculty member named Maxwell A. Mega, easily took in its readers, even prompting the journal editors to provide helpful suggestions for subsequent revisions. In follow-up interviews, the academics were quite consistent in one respect: if Max Mega carefully targeted fringe and less prestigious journals, it is likely that he would get published. If caught and if he does not admit guilt, it is less likely that the university would take action against him. Moreover, those interviewed questioned whether it is even the role of journal reviewers to detect fraud. After all, some would say, the whole academic system is based on trust.

One chapter is devoted to the implications of research misconduct for libraries and librarians. In the view of the author-editors, many authors take no responsibility for the accuracy or correctness of any of the information in their collections. Because, since 1967, the ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights” has omitted any reference to the factual correctness of library materials, library users are responsible by default for judging both the accuracy and the relevance of any and all information obtained from a library. As awareness of the problem of academic dishonesty grows in library circles, however, librarians are beginning to assume greater responsibility for the accuracy of their collections. In particular, greater attention is being—and, in the author-editors’ opinion, must be—paid to systematically recording or cataloguing errata and retractions, both within the library’s own collection and through electronic databases.

The book persuasively argues that research misconduct is a serious problem. But how much of a problem, and how to deal with it, remains a challenge. If trust is indeed the basis of academic life, routine mistrust of researchers and their written findings would cast a pall over that life. Nevertheless, some skepticism is healthy. After all, how do you know the book I just reviewed even exists?—William M. Hannay, Schiff Hardin & Waite, Chicago.