Late in December 1983 I wrote an unusual letter. It alleged scientific fraud on the part of Dr. Stephen E. Breuning, a young University of Pittsburgh psychologist working on one of my research grants. The letter was six pages long with 43 pages of appendices. It was addressed to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the federal funding agency that had supported my research on psychotropic medication for many years.

I was quite naive at that time. I thought that the most painful part was over-suspecting wrongdoing, investigating it, and finally reporting a promising young researcher. Those activities wrecked a close personal relationship.

In many ways, it is fortunate that we cannot foretell the future. I had no idea at that time that an even more difficult period of five years lay ahead and that this scientific fraud case would end with Breuning being sentenced in a federal court. During those five long years, Breuning's university attempted to cover up his activities and NIMH's investigation moved with glacier-like speed.

Even more emotionally painful for me was my wife's kidney failure in September 1984 after 30 years as a diabetic. She was placed on many medications and hemodialysis to sustain her life. She lived until late April 1986. Her long illness brought home to me how important it is that the research supporting medical treatment be without any hint of scientific misconduct. The lives of people depend on truthfulness and honesty in medical research. Breuning's fraudulent research writings had major policy and medical implications for tens of thousands of quite vulnerable mentally retarded people receiving the neuroleptic medication (tranquilizers) about which Breuning wrote. My wife's suffering and death gave me the motivation to pursue the Breuning case to its conclusion.

When I first met Breuning in 1979, he was employed as a psychologist at Coldwater Regional Center, a residential facility for mentally retarded people in Michigan. In January 1981 he moved to the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. When I visited Breuning there in September 1983 to discuss research activities, his research assistant told me Breuning was obtaining perfect, is. 100% agreement, between nurses independently rating the abnormal involuntary movements of a neurological disorder, tardive dyskinesia, caused by the long-term use of neuroleptic medication.

Rating the severity of the complex movements of a patient is difficult. No matter how clever a researcher you are, you cannot obtain perfect agreement among nurses who rate the patients. The research assistant's statement may have been meant to belittle me for not being able to produce the outstanding results Breuning was supposedly obtaining. But what she implicitly told me was that he was cheating.

I then launched my own investigation into Breuning's research. Three months later I found the "smoking gun" in his abstract for a symposium on tardive dyskinesia I was planning for a December 1983 meeting. The abstract claimed that he examined 45 patients at Coldwater Center every six months for two year after he left the facility. Since I knew that he left no assistants at the Center and never returned from Pittsburgh during that time to conduct the examinations himself, I demanded he provide me with documentation of the examinations. When he could not, I wrote the letter to NIMH. NIMH asked the University of Pittsburgh to investigate.

Early in the University's investigation, Breuning confessed to falsifying the abstract. In February 1984, the faculty investigating committee reported to the Dean of the School of Medicine that: "Dr. Breuning admitted to us that statements in the abstract were false." Nevertheless, the Dean wrote NIMH in July 1984, summarizing the findings of the investigation, "Briefly stated, our Hearing Board can find no serious fault with Dr. Breuning's activities here in Pittsburgh ...I have no ground to take action against him…”

In February 1985, more than a year after my letter, NIMH finally appointed an investigative panel of five scientists to examine my allegations. Although the panel conducted interviews, no public action was taken until Science magazine (December 1986) published a critical article stating that the investigation "has been dragging on for almost 21/2 years."

Only 23 days later (and over the Christmas holidays), NIMH issued a draft report. Although the final report was delayed, it was finally issued April 20, 1987. It contained a stinging condemnation, "it is the unanimous conclusion of the Panel that "Stephen E. Breuning knowingly, willfully, and repeatedly engaged in misleading and deceptive practices in reporting results of research supported by. . . Public Health Service grants ...."

The final report and evidence was turned over to the United States Attorney in Baltimore. In April 1988 Breuning was indicted on three counts, apparently the first scientist holding a federal research grant to be indicted for scientific misconduct. He was sentenced by a federal judge in Baltimore in November 1988 almost five years after I wrote the letter to NIMH.

Since my NIMH research grant was to end in April 1987, I applied for a renewal. At that time I had been funded by NIMH continuously for more that 16 years. A committee of my peers unanimously approved my renewal application with a priority score (which usually guarantees funding). But in February 1987, little more than a month before my grant was to end, I received a letter from NIMH stating that the grant would not be renewed. After considerable discussion of NIMH's action in the media, another peer committee reviewed the application and recommended that it be funded-but for only one year and at about 10% of the original requested amount.

These events were discussed at a Congressional hearing conducted in April 1988 by Representative Ted Weiss, Chairman of the Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee. One subcommittee member remarked, "The coincidence, Dr. Cowdry [NIMH's Acting Deputy Director], of this research coming to an end at the same time, it really stretches my believability that they were not related and somehow a reflection on Dr. Sprague. That is one I will have to assign to people that sell bridges in New York. It just is very hard for me to believe that all of this was coincidental."

There is a myth that science is beautifully self-correcting. The few students of scientific misconduct who have written about the topic paint out that the correction is slow and often painful and that peer review seldom catches the misconduct. Usually an insider with information generally not available to others blows the whistle on the scientist who is cheating. Quite often the whistleblower pays dearly for the action.

Such a picture contrasts starkly with what most people believe about misconduct in science. However, it is a picture repeatedly painted in the last few years as case after case of scientific misconduct has been reported in the media. The cases have caught the attention of Congress which is likely to enact legislation about the matter during the next session. Many people believe that Congress may over-react and pass cumbersome laws. Clearly it is time for scientists to do something to clean their own house.

But what can be done? First, scientists can inform themselves on the issues involved. Second, reasonable guidelines can be proposed and established. It will not work to react to the proposed new legislation or federal guidelines by proclaiming that science rarely has misconduct and should be left alone. It seems to me that the mood of the public and Congress will not tolerate such an attitude any longer.

What are some reasonable changes? The record of universities investigating charges of scientific misconduct and taking appropriate action is quite poor-with a few notable exceptions. University administrators and faculty should be willing to investigate speedily and appropriately such charges and take disciplinary action when necessary. To fail to do so only makes the matter worse when the misconduct is publicized (as much misconduct eventually is).

Journals should take the lead in reporting substantiated cases of scientific misconduct and correcting the literature when necessary. Unfortunately, the journals are either reluctant or slow to take corrective action.

Courses about the ethics of science should help make students aware of the problems and, hopefully, discourage those few among us who are willing to break the rules. I taught such a course in the fall semester of 1988 at the University of Illinois. I am willing to share my syllabus and materials with anyone wanting the information.

Finally and most important, a change of the scientist's attitude toward the problem is needed. Nobody has accurate information on the prevalence of scientific misconduct. But that is not the important question. The problem is serious, it needs to be recognized and action must be taken.