真不知道美国有这样一个专门的机构，美国的学术界对学术不端的重视程度本来也很高，再加这样的行政机构，可以说效果应该不错。肯定不能说我们的学术界比美国干净，但不知道我们有没有对应的学术机构，如果没有，什么途径可以处理类似问题。前段时间中央电视台报道了一些相关问题，显然除学术机构本身外，政府任何一个机构都没有这样配套的机构。不过有了这样的机构，怎么运行也是问题。从这个事件看，美国这方面也运行地也不怎么理想。

美国学术廉正办公室是专门监督生物医学研究学术不端的最高政府机构，该办公室主任David Wright因为对机构严重的官僚作风失望而主动要求辞职。最近《科学内情人》公开发表了他措辞严厉的辞职信，信上他认为这是他干过“最糟糕也是最好的工作”。

学术廉正办公室隶属于美国健康与人类服务部，负责监督受NIH和公共卫生部资助者的学术不端事务。该机构组织相关教育课程，审核学术机构对学术不端的调查，每年公布10例左右学术不端案件，学术不端主要包括伪造、篡改和剽窃行为。他们也会给公共卫生部提出对学术不端行为的制裁建议，例如禁止相关学者申请经费。随着学术论文因为学术不端被撤回的案例增加，学术廉正办公室的曝光率逐渐增多。

2011年有观察人员对Wright的任职赞赏有加，因为这中断了学术廉正办公室2年没有固定主任的状况。Wright是密歇根州立大学科学史学家，11年前是该机构的顾问。

但今年2月25日，Wright突然给健康卫生与公众服务部助理部长Howard Koh写了封措辞严厉的辞职信，Wright的辞职目前没有被健康卫生与公众服务部正式公布，上周这一事件在Retraction Watch的博客上公开。健康卫生与公众服务部发言人Diane Gianelli确认了Wright的辞职，但拒绝评论此事，并说曾经担任此临时职务的健康卫生与公众服务部一位官员Don Wright将继续担任该职务。

在辞职信上，David Wright写到自己在这个职位上干的非常好，但这只是他工作内容35%，其他时间他主要研究健康卫生与公众服务部在学术廉正办公室运行方面的官僚主义作风。他写到：一项本来2天能完成的工作要拖延数周甚至数月，学术廉正办公室的经费被几个老官僚随意挥霍，助理部长Koh的工作方式有严重的缺陷，简直可用“偷偷摸摸、独裁和莫名其妙”来形容。例如，他曾经告诉Koh的副手Wanda Jones，他迫切需要任命一个教育部门的主任。但Jones告诉他应该有一个优先建议名单。这导致这个位置持续16个月没有人负责。

Wright认为学术廉正办公室本来就不应该归健康卫生与公众服务部管理。健康卫生与公众服务部自身都受官僚作风困惑，官员们花大把时间应付各种会议、数据收集和各种报告，表面上显得忙忙碌碌和卓有成效，其实毫无效率可言。Koh也认为该部门政治味道过重。

Wright这次并没有提最近参议员查尔斯的来信，查尔斯格拉斯利曾举报爱荷华州立大学艾滋病研究人员伪造数据，骗取NIH1900万美元的研究经费，学术廉正办公室决定禁止Dong-Pyou Han 今后三年从PHS申请任何经费。格拉斯利认为处罚力度不够严厉，并质疑未收回先前资助的研究经费。

DavidWright现在拒绝ScienceInsider的采访，他将在3月27日正式离职，并说将会正式出版他在学术廉正办公室任职期间的工作经历。

AnnArbor密歇根大学学术不端研究专家Nicholas Steneck认为，学术廉正办公室主任是很重要的职位，不能长期闲置。他希望很快能有人接任这个职务。

以下是匿名提供的辞职信原文：

2/25

Dr. Howard Koh, M.D.

Assistant Secretary for Health

Dear Howard:

I am writing to resign my position as Director, Office of Research Integrity, ORI/OASH/DHHS

This has been at once the best and worst job I’ve ever had.  The best part of it has been the opportunity to lead ORI intellectually and professionally in helping research institutions better handle allegations of research misconduct, provide in-service training for institutional Research Integrity Officers (RIOs), and develop programming to promote the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR).  Working with members of the research community, particularly RIOs, and the brilliant scientist-investigators in ORI has been one of the great pleasures of my long career.  Unfortunately, and to my great surprise, it turned out to be only about 35% of the job.

The rest of my role as ORI Director has been the very worst job I have ever had and it occupies up to 65% of my time.  That part of the job is spent navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy to secure resources and, yes, get permission for ORI to serve the research community.  I knew coming into this job about the bureaucratic limitations of the federal government, but I had no idea how stifling it would be. What I was able to do in a day or two as an academic administrator takes weeks or months in the federal government, our precinct of which is OASH.

I believe there are a number of reasons for this.  First, whereas in most organizations the front-line agencies that do the actual work, in our case protecting the integrity of millions of dollars of PHS-funded research, command the administrative support services to get the job done.  In OASH it’s the exact opposite.  The Op-Divs, as the front-line offices are called, get our budgets and then have to go hat-in-hand to the administrative support people in the “immediate office” of OASH to spend it, almost item by item.  These people who are generally poorly informed about what ORI is and does decide whether our requests are “mission critical.”

On one occasion, I was invited to give a talk on research integrity and misconduct to a large group of AAAS fellows.  I needed to spend $35 to convert some old cassette tapes to CDs for use in the presentation.  The immediate office denied my request after a couple of days of noodling.  A university did the conversion for me in twenty minutes, and refused payment when I told them it was for an educational purpose.

Second, the organizational culture of OASH’s immediate office is seriously flawed, in my opinion.  The academic literature over the last twenty-five years on successful organizations highlights several characteristics: transparency, power-sharing or shared decision-making and accountability.   If you invert these principles, you have an organization (OASH in this instance), which is secretive, autocratic and unaccountable.

In one instance, by way of illustration, I urgently needed to fill a vacancy for an ORI division director.  I asked the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health (your deputy) when I could proceed.  She said there was a priority list.  I asked where ORI’s request was on that list.  She said the list was secret and that we weren’t on the top, but we weren’t on the bottom either. Sixteen months later we still don’t have a division director on board.

On another occasion I asked your deputy why you didn’t conduct an evaluation by the Op-Divs of the immediate office administrative services to try to improve them.  She responded that that had been tried a few years ago and the results were so negative that no further evaluations have been conducted.

Third, there is the nature of the federal bureaucracy itself.  The sociologist Max Weber observed in the early 20^th century that while bureaucracy is in some instances an optimal organizational mode for a rationalized, industrial society, it has drawbacks.  One is that public bureaucracies quit being about serving the public and focus instead on perpetuating themselves.  This is exactly my experience with OASH. We spend exorbitant amounts of time in meetings and in generating repetitive and often meaningless data and reports to make our precinct of the bureaucracy look productive.  None of this renders the slightest bit of assistance to ORI in handling allegations of misconduct or in promoting the responsible conduct of research.  Instead, it sucks away time and resources that we might better use to meet our mission.  Since I’ve been here I’ve been advised by my superiors that I had “to make my bosses look good.”  I’ve been admonished: “Dave, you are a visionary leader but what we need here are team players.”   Recently, I was advised that if I wanted to be happy in government service, I had to “lower my expectations.”  The one thing no one in OASH leadership has said to me in two years is ‘how can we help ORI better serve the research community?’  Not once.

Finally, there is another important organizational question that deserves mention:  Is OASH the proper home for a regulatory agency such as ORI?  OASH is a collection of important public health offices that have agendas significantly different from the regulatory roles of ORI and OHRP. You’ve observed that OASH operates in an “intensely political environment.”  I agree and have observed that in this environment decisions are often made on the basis of political expediency and to obtain favorable “optics.” There is often a lack of procedural rigor in this environment.  I discovered recently, for example, that OASH operates a grievance procedure for employees that has no due process protections of any kind for respondents to those grievances.  Indeed, there are no written rules or procedures for the OASH grievance process regarding the rights and responsibilities of respondents. By contrast, agencies such as ORI are bound by regulation to make principled decisions on the basis of clearly articulated procedures that protect the rights of all involved.  Our decisions must be supported by the weight of factual evidence. ORI’s decisions may be and frequently are tested in court.   There are members of the press and the research community who don’t believe ORI belongs in an agency such as OASH and I, reluctantly, have come to agree.

In closing, these twenty-six months of service as the Director of ORI have been a remarkable experience.  As I wrote earlier in this letter, working with the research community and the remarkable scientist-investigators at ORI has been the best job I’ve ever had.  As for the rest, I’m offended as an American taxpayer that the federal bureaucracy—at least the part I’ve labored in—is so profoundly dysfunctional.  I’m hardly the first person to have made that discovery, but I’m saddened by the fact that there is so little discussion, much less outrage, regarding the problem.  To promote healthy and productive discussion, I intend to publish a version of the daily log I’ve kept as ORI Director in order to share my experience and observations with my colleagues in government and with members of the regulated research community.

I plan to work through Tuesday March 4, 2014 and then use vacation or sick days until Thursday March 27 (by which time I will have re-established health care through my university) and then end my federal government service.

Sincerely,