Europe Stresses Prevention Rather Than Cure

SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCTRINGBERG, BAVARIA, AND EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND-- A rising tide of retracted papers and some high-profile fraud cases have begun to stir European research managers into action on the issue of fraud. Ethics committees and working groups are now hard at work in the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries churning out new guidelines and procedures for good lab practice and publication, and conferences on scientific ethics and misconduct were recently held in the U.K. and Germany. But rather than policing misconduct, they aim to nip it in the bud.