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Published online 6 May 2009 | Nature 459, 23 (2009) | doi:10.1038/459023c

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Misconduct scandal hits German university

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  • As member and speakeer of the board for plant science at the German Science Foundation (DFG) I like to make the point that review procedures of the DFG are seriously conducted. The fact that during the evaluation of this project the existence of papers mentioned by the applicants was controlled supports the quality of the DFG evaluation procedure. Your report is not totally exact. This was not a milestone report as you state but a complete application for a new founding phase of three years, in the report part of which this wrong citation was discovered. In such applications for a new founding phase, rejection of some project parts is current and in some cases it happens that the whole consortium is rejected. After discovering that some (indeed a few) applicants had listed non existing papers declared as submitted, the DFG rejected the complete consortium, which shows that the reaction was severe, and it was good so. I hope that the DFG will not have any reputation injury in this case. Here the DFG perfectly applied the rules of good scientific practices it has contributed to define. The DFG is indeed a very unique structure of the German system, which besides organisations such as the Max Planck society and the Humboldt foundations contribute to make from Germany a good site for research. Prof Francois Buscot (Halle) Germany

    • 15 May, 2009
    • Posted by: Francois Buscot