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[Feature] Name that offender? It depends

ScienceNOW - Fetched: October 27th, 2016, 3:00pm UTC

Science faced a major obstacle when it set out to identify researchers barred from receiving government grants because of research misconduct. The problem: There is no government-wide registry of cases, and no common approach by the two agencies that police scientific misconduct. The Office of Research Integrity within the Department of Health and Human Services describes the cases of sanctioned researchers and the outcome on its website in the Federal Register, whereas the National Science Foundation redacts the name and all identifying features from its published summary of completed cases. At the same time, an obscure government website intended to prevent federal officials from inadvertently giving a grant or contract to someone who is ineligible provides a limited amount of information on those cases. Author: Jeffrey Mervis

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