The definition and adoption of more rigorous procedures to protect against potentially fraudulent research is not keeping up with the pace of the European Union’s science and technology research budget, which should grow from € 57 billion between 2007 and 2012 to € 80 billion between 2012 and 2020. In an article in the May 5 issue of Lancet, however, Xavier Bosch, a physician from the University of Barcelona, Spain, warned of the urgent need for regulation defining scientific misconduct and to establish procedures to avoid it. One possibility, he argues, is that, as in the United States, misconduct be defined as fabrication, falsification or plagiarism of scientific data. Bosch suggests that ghostwriting in scientific articles also be considered misconduct. He proposes the expansion of and further emphasis on the code of ethics already used in EU research grants.
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