Participation in the task force investigating allegations of scientific falsification against former cancer researcher Friedhelm Herrmann (see above) seems to have been a generally negative experience for all those involved.

Extensive evidence of data manipulation, a lack of cooperation from some authors, and the lack of interest from many of the journals in which suspicious papers had been published, disillusioned all task-force members.

The task force was set up in 1998 by the DFG, Germany's main university research funding agency (see Nature 395, 533; 1998). Its costs of DM750,000 (US$370,000) were provided by the DFG and the cancer research charity the Mildred Scheel Foundation.

“At first it was very interesting,” says Patrik Grühn, a postdoc on the project. “Data falsification was a new and big thing. But later, after seeing so many falsifications, it got boring, and it makes no difference to the principle involved to prove that 94 papers, rather than 84, are suspect.”

For the leader of the task force, Ulf Rapp of the University of Würzburg, the most frustrating thing was the “moving target” provided by the scientists under investigation. “Everyone pointed their finger at someone else when asked who was responsible for each experiment,” he says.

Even given the lack of cooperation from some authors, the extensive ‘grey category’ of papers, where no strong decision on whether the data quoted might have been tampered with, was also a sign that clinical laboratories require mechanisms for ensuring good scientific record-keeping, he says.

Rapp blames lax standards in clinical research in Germany for the outbreaks of scientific misconduct. He attributes this largely to the fact that clinicians do not have to be formally trained in research methods. This problem is exacerbated by a requirement for clinicians to have a long publication record in order to achieve promotion.

Rapp is also angry that it has so far proved impossible for the courts to bring a legal case against either Herrmann or Marion Brach, and he believes that professional societies have not been sufficiently vociferous in condemning misconduct (see Nature 395, 532– 533; 1998).

But in response, Volker Diehl, president of the German Society for Haematology and Oncology, says the society responded rapidly, expelling both Herrmann and Brach, and setting up a group of retired professors to whom young scientists can turn if they are concerned about misconduct in their laboratory.