Beryl Lieff Benderly, Washington, D.C....the key is institutional structures that value, encourage, and reward skeptical interchange among personnel at all levels. Events such as a regularly scheduled lab meeting can discourage would-be cheaters "precisely because every week they have this confrontation and someone can call them on it." The research systems in more scandal-prone countries "don't have this sort of built-in mechanism for quality control, and as a result there isn't a structured space for that sort of challenge."
Although Lee and Schrank hold up the U.S. system as one whose structure encourages good conduct in research, "we think there's probably too much hierarchy in U.S. labs as well," Schrank says. The Hauser case, in which it was reportedly junior members of the lab who unmasked wrongdoing despite Hauser's efforts to dissuade them, is an example of how hierarchy and integrity are often in competition....
