With the recent outpouring of research and academic misconduct allegations raising a dark cloud over scientific scholarship, Principal Investigators, or PIs, should be on high alert to ensure their labs – and their grant funding – are not tainted by poor lab practices, misbehaving postdocs, or other common missteps. Here is a list of seven ways that PIs can proactively protect their labs and their reputation from future misconduct allegations.

1. Centralize and back up data: A central theme of many misconduct allegations is that data in a published manuscript were used improperly or incompletely. PIs and postdocs alike can insulate themselves from false claims of data misuse by maintaining a single depository of all data – such as a single electronic drive, a central lab notebook, or ideally, both. Storing data in a central repository should be mandatory and all members or co-authors should be required to certify that they have complied with the policy. PIs should also require that all data be date-stamped using a uniform system to guard against future allegations that data were fabricated or did not exist at the time of publication.
2. Meet with lab members regularly: Supervise, supervise, supervise! While it is impossible to oversee every experiment in one’s lab, PIs should implement regular checks on lab members by reviewing their experiments on a weekly – or at least regular – basis. Meetings should be in-person if possible and encompass reviews and approval of both experimental protocols and preliminary results obtained. These routine steps can mitigate against a claim that the PI was complicit in unexpected fabrications or falsification occurring after proper approvals were given.
3. Closely review grant certification: It is critical that every signatory on a federal grant read the annual certifications he or she is signing, every time. While the federal grant forms do not often change from year to year, the conditions in the lab, including who is benefiting from the grant money, receipt of additional sources of funding, and new or changed professional affiliations, may all impact the meaning and accuracy of the certification. Even a minor inaccuracy may be deemed a false or fraudulent claim and subject the grantee institution and/or the PI to scrutiny by the granting agency or federal law enforcement. You can never be too careful.
4. Ban the use of “placeholders”: Many scientists feel compelled to use “stock“ images or control images as “placeholders” while preparing the final images for a manuscript. This practice can be very dangerous (as it is not always well documented which images are inserted only as placeholders) and often leads to inaccuracies in the final figures caused by a failure to replace the placeholders with the final data. These types of mistakes are frequently charged as fabrication or falsification of images and are hard to prove. To prevent unwarranted scrutiny, PIs should ban the use of placeholders in any draft manuscript or lab presentation.
5. Control manuscript versions: Many errors – even honest errors – occur during the drafting and editing process. Busy lab members are often strapped for time and must quickly revise figures to meet publication deadlines and satisfy peer review critiques. PIs should work with the institution’s IT team and lab members to ensure manuscripts are drafted and edited in an orderly fashion and have a clear chain of custody should concerns arise about how a manuscript was revised – or not revised – after publication.
6. Implement an authorship policy: Authorship disputes fall outside the traditional definition of research misconduct – falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism (FFP) – but are a related concern in academic publications. Young postdocs are often promised first or second authorship credits by their mentors while others are given credit that is undeserved. To avoid disputes among authors, or those not credited, PIs should implement a strict authorship policy detailing the requirements for first, second, and corresponding author, as well as any other basic requirements for inclusion as an author on a publication originating in his or her lab. Any such policy should be consistent with any existing authorship or ethical policies in place at the institution and the PI should document that lab staff have been informed of it.
7. Educate lab members on FFP: Knowledge is power. PIs should ensure that all members of his or her lab receive comprehensive training on the institution’s policies governing ethical and responsible research practices as well as the federal requirements set in place by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). Lab members should be given annual trainings and encouraged to report suspected misconduct through anonymous channels and to avail themselves or resources outside the lab to seek guidance on research integrity and compliance issues. PIs should document that everyone in the lab has undergone training. Putting such safeguards in place help to distance the lab – and the institution – from a bad actor.