Munich

The president of the DFG, the German research agency, has blasted what he regards as the light punishment given to researchers involved in a major case of scientific fraud.

An independent task force, set up in 1998 by the DFG to investigate accusations of fraud in several scientific papers, concluded that nearly 100 papers contained falsified data. But those implicated in the fraud were simply banned from serving as peer reviewers for up to five years.

Writing in the DFG's publication Forschung, the agency's president, Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, strongly criticizes the fact that Roland Mertelsmann is still head of a department at the University of Freiburg. Mertelsmann's name appeared on some of the fraudulent papers. “This is an affront to scientific research,” he writes. “No wonder that the absence of consequences is perceived in public as a failure of the system.”

Winnacker also expresses regret that Mertelsmann and his co-authors were not subjected to stronger disciplinary or criminal proceedings. “Neither police nor public prosecutors are interested in scientific misconduct,” he says. “The sufferer is science, the public reputation of which is lastingly damaged.”

Winnacker says that the fraud investigations were impeded by “walls of silence” that some of the accused put up around themselves.

Members of the task force complained that the DFG is essentially protecting clinical researchers involved in the case from appropriate sanctions for publishing papers with false data (see Nature 415, 3; 2002). But Winnacker defends the DFG, which he says has limited powers for dealing with such cases.

The sanctions that it can implement, he pointed out to Nature, are limited to preventing identified fraudsters from receiving grants or advising the DFG in any capacity for a period of two to five years.

On the positive side, the fraud case has led the DFG and other German scientific organizations to set up new rules for scientific conduct, Winnacker says. From next summer, only institutes that have such rules will be able to apply for DFG grants.