The legal basis for the Danish committee on scientific dishonesty

The author, a High Court Judge, has chaired the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) since its establishment in 1992. The Committee has worked in the health sector, but from 1999 the scope has been broadened to cover all fields of science. The article describes how the work is organised and the experiences gained. It is stressed, that the difficulty in connection with scientific dishonesty is, first and foremost, to organise a system suitable for investigating cases effectively, professionally, and with proper respect to the fundamental legal rights of the parties involved. The Committee has also spent much effort in determining what can be termed scientific dishonesty and what falls outside this category but which may, nevertheless, be characterised as breaching of good scientific practice. It is emphasised that these rules are not arbitrarily established by the Committee, but formulated in accordance with norms general accepted by opinion leaders in the scientific community. An carlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium, Scientific Misconduct. An International Perspective, organised by The Medical University of Warsaw, 16 November, 1998. The article is based on more comprehensive articles by the same author in DCSD’s Annual Reports for 1993 and 1995.