Sir

In response to your editorial, “Surviving misconduct is one thing, accountability is another”1, and a subsequent comment2, I would like to bring to your notice an initiative already under way to provide “good guidelines for the conduct of research”.

In 1993 the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty, appointed by the Danish Medical Research Council, defined guidelines for the presentation of experimental reports, and data documentation and storage. It was felt that, if such proposals were to have a chance of being followed, they had to be concise and readily available in the research milieu. After consultation with all major medical research institutions in Denmark, the revised guidelines were printed on one sheet of paper — those for basic health research on one side, and those for clinical research on the other side. The page was embedded in acid-proof plastic to prevent it from being damaged in the laboratory.

About 1,000 copies were distributed to laboratories all over Denmark. After a year's trial in 1995, new comments were invited from the same institutions. The guidelines had been well received and were being used. On the basis of proposals for improvement, an updated version was distributed to PhD students and their supervisors, and made available to all interested parties. This revised version was published in English in a paper describing the motives for the choice of guidelines and how they were adapted to medical research in Denmark3. The guidelines are also available on the web (http://www.forskraad.dk/publ/guide.html).

I think this preventive initiative is much in keeping with the proposed “adoption of a standardized recording protocol”2.