Sir

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has long fostered research integrity, developed ethical codes for scientific societies, promulgated guidelines for inquiries into allegations of scientific misconduct, issued policies and recommendations for dealing with financial conflicts of interest in clinical research, and, most recently, collaborated with the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in educational efforts and workshops on the responsible conduct of research. The AAMC has long recognized that misconduct breaches the social contract underpinning academic science and undermines a scientific establishment that sets the standard of international excellence. Contrary to your assertion, the AAMC strongly supports ethics training for graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows.

In his annual address to academic leaders and the public, the AAMC president, Jordan Cohen, stated “either we are trustworthy and deserve the privilege of self-regulation, or we are suspect and warrant the close scrutiny of government.” We are proud of our record, which speaks for itself.

Your Opinion article (Nature 420, 253; 200210.1038/420253a) mischaracterizes the opposition expressed by the AAMC and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) to the ORI's proposed data-collection instrument. Our objections focus on two critical elements: first, the likelihood that the survey would result in unusable, invalid and easily misinterpreted 'data' based on subjective criteria and imprecise measures. One example of this is mentioned in your editorial — asking for instances where a researcher observed a colleague “citing an article they had not read firsthand”. Our second objection is to the ORI's inexplicable defiance of the settled federal definition of scientific misconduct, which can lead only to confusion.

The crux of the issue, which you fail to comprehend, is that the federal definition of 'scientific misconduct' is a marker for the proper role of government in overseeing the conduct of federally funded academic research. On this matter, the US scientific community has consistently spoken with a single voice in arguing that this role be circumscribed and focused on transgressions that are reasonably unambiguous and are unacceptable across all scientific and scholarly disciplines.

This unanimity does not imply, however, that the boundaries of unethical scientific and professional behaviour should be so circumscribed — quite the contrary. It is not the role of the federal government to define or prescribe those ethical boundaries. Rather, it is the obligation of academia and scientific societies, and it is to stimulate and assist our member institutions to meet that obligation that the AAMC has been so actively and demonstrably engaged for so long.

Perhaps Nature believes that science needs a federally sanctioned 'high church' as the final arbiter of scientific morals, ethics and integrity. The AAMC, and, we believe, all of US science, profoundly disagrees.