A responsibility index ....How to evaluate a nation’s scientific integrity.
If there was one word that resonated above all at this week’s Global
Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was ‘trust’.
Given the context of the meeting — a disastrous meltdown of the
world financial system — the assembled chief executives of international
companies and institutions might have found this something
of a sick joke. But Saudi Arabia has set itself the goal of strong international
competitiveness, and in the past year has climbed the rankings
of competitiveness as measured by the World Economic Forum from
35th to 27th position. It also wants to promote a national climate and
international perception of good corporate behaviour — a goal in
which trust is essential.
Like many emerging countries, Saudi Arabia measures itself by indices,
and has developed its own index for ‘responsible competitiveness’,
based on a number of metrics (see www.rci.org.sa). But fostering
strong science-based innovation requires its own metrics of inputs
and achievement. So here, for any country concerned about the reputation
and integrity of its research base, are some metrics that might be
developed into an index for responsible scientific competitiveness.
One set of metrics relates to misconduct such as fraud, fabrication
and plagiarism, which can gravely damage a country’s reputation
and destroy that of any researcher caught in its immediate wake, let
alone the perpetrators. Two responsibility metrics would therefore
relate to the infrastructures in place for the prevention and to the
investigation, punishment and open declaration of misconduct. The
latter metric, in turn, would look at the investigatory mechanisms in
place at both the national funding-agency level, and the local level of
publicly funded universities and government labs.
Less headline-grabbing misbehaviour is also important. As discussions
about scientifically developed countries in this publication have
shown, human nature and pressures to deliver results lead to worrying
levels of discreet sleaze — the selection or cleaning up of data, the
addition or removal of names from author lists and the like. This can
only be treated in culture, by the education of young researchers in
good practice, by the reward of good mentoring, by the scrutiny and
preservation of lab notebooks, and the insistent emphasis of guidelines.
Such institutional encouragement of good practice is easy to
document as a metric, albeit in short supply in most countries.
A second set of metrics would measure the transparency and objectivity
of a nation’s systems of evaluation, funding, staff appointments
and promotion. A system that discriminates against researchers on
the grounds of gender, ethnicity, age or cronyism is short-sighted and
will gravely undermine the scientific potential of any nation.
A third set would evaluate a nation’s framework for science policy,
and the extent to which it allows talented scientists to follow their
noses in the pursuit of what makes the world tick while also giving
societal values and economic needs their due priority.
And a final set would measure the elusive concept of ‘openness’ — a
key corollary of trust. Openness implies a receptivity to the ideas and
practices of researchers in other countries, especially valuable given
the evidence that international collaborations are more powerful
generators of strong science than those that are intra-national. But
openness is also expressed as a willingness to have ideas and conclusions
publicly criticized — a culture essential to science itself, but
also to the successful pursuit of a robust strategic policy and hence
to international confidence.
Taken together, these qualitative metrics would amount to an index
of responsible science for any country, whatever its stage of scientific
development. They could be measured by the documentation
of structures and practices and by independent surveys of scientists.
A study of the state of openness and development in Arab countries
(N. Fergany Nature 444, 33–34; 2006) showed that Saudi Arabia in
2005 was starting from a low base. Since then, support for education,
uptake by women of tertiary education and support for science
have experienced significant growth. We leave it to the Saudis and
to researchers and policy-makers in other ambitious technological
powers to reflect on just how well their countries measure up across
these metrics of responsible scientific competitiveness.
Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was ‘trust’.
Given the context of the meeting — a disastrous meltdown of the
world financial system — the assembled chief executives of international
companies and institutions might have found this something
of a sick joke. But Saudi Arabia has set itself the goal of strong international
competitiveness, and in the past year has climbed the rankings
of competitiveness as measured by the World Economic Forum from
35th to 27th position. It also wants to promote a national climate and
international perception of good corporate behaviour — a goal in
which trust is essential.
Like many emerging countries, Saudi Arabia measures itself by indices,
and has developed its own index for ‘responsible competitiveness’,
based on a number of metrics (see www.rci.org.sa). But fostering
strong science-based innovation requires its own metrics of inputs
and achievement. So here, for any country concerned about the reputation
and integrity of its research base, are some metrics that might be
developed into an index for responsible scientific competitiveness.
One set of metrics relates to misconduct such as fraud, fabrication
and plagiarism, which can gravely damage a country’s reputation
and destroy that of any researcher caught in its immediate wake, let
alone the perpetrators. Two responsibility metrics would therefore
relate to the infrastructures in place for the prevention and to the
investigation, punishment and open declaration of misconduct. The
latter metric, in turn, would look at the investigatory mechanisms in
place at both the national funding-agency level, and the local level of
publicly funded universities and government labs.
Less headline-grabbing misbehaviour is also important. As discussions
about scientifically developed countries in this publication have
shown, human nature and pressures to deliver results lead to worrying
levels of discreet sleaze — the selection or cleaning up of data, the
addition or removal of names from author lists and the like. This can
only be treated in culture, by the education of young researchers in
good practice, by the reward of good mentoring, by the scrutiny and
preservation of lab notebooks, and the insistent emphasis of guidelines.
Such institutional encouragement of good practice is easy to
document as a metric, albeit in short supply in most countries.
A second set of metrics would measure the transparency and objectivity
of a nation’s systems of evaluation, funding, staff appointments
and promotion. A system that discriminates against researchers on
the grounds of gender, ethnicity, age or cronyism is short-sighted and
will gravely undermine the scientific potential of any nation.
A third set would evaluate a nation’s framework for science policy,
and the extent to which it allows talented scientists to follow their
noses in the pursuit of what makes the world tick while also giving
societal values and economic needs their due priority.
And a final set would measure the elusive concept of ‘openness’ — a
key corollary of trust. Openness implies a receptivity to the ideas and
practices of researchers in other countries, especially valuable given
the evidence that international collaborations are more powerful
generators of strong science than those that are intra-national. But
openness is also expressed as a willingness to have ideas and conclusions
publicly criticized — a culture essential to science itself, but
also to the successful pursuit of a robust strategic policy and hence
to international confidence.
Taken together, these qualitative metrics would amount to an index
of responsible science for any country, whatever its stage of scientific
development. They could be measured by the documentation
of structures and practices and by independent surveys of scientists.
A study of the state of openness and development in Arab countries
(N. Fergany Nature 444, 33–34; 2006) showed that Saudi Arabia in
2005 was starting from a low base. Since then, support for education,
uptake by women of tertiary education and support for science
have experienced significant growth. We leave it to the Saudis and
to researchers and policy-makers in other ambitious technological
powers to reflect on just how well their countries measure up across
these metrics of responsible scientific competitiveness.
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