White House releases new scientific integrity guidelines

Every US funding agency will be required to designate a scientific integrity official, and agencies that fund, conduct, or oversee research will have to establish the position of chief science officer under new guidelines released Jan. 12 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The guidelines create a single definition of scientific integrity and provide a model policy to help agencies as they update and revise their existing integrity plans. OSTP also is creating a subcommittee on scientific integrity in the National Science and Technology Council, a group that discusses and coordinates policy across federal research agencies. “Every agency now has a responsibility to make sure its expert staff know their rights, and that political appointees know that these rules will be taken seriously and they will be held accountable if they break them,” Jacob Carter, research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says in a statement. The guidelines follow a January 2022 OSTP report that set out five scientific integrity principles to guide science in government, including scientists’ right to dissent, speak freely, and hold people responsible for integrity violations.