By Liam Mannix
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Australia’s top research agency has been savaged by government auditors over its lax approach to scientific misconduct and fraud in an audit that lays the groundwork for a shake-up of the way bad science is policed.
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) found a litany of problems at the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which hands out about $1.5 billion in taxpayer grants each year.
Government auditors have criticised the government’s top research agency’s lax approach to scientific misconduct and fraud.Credit: Aresna Villanueva
The audit – published online in late October – highlighted a lack of measures to prevent fraud, or staff with even basic training to spot it. The audit office also found the council had “inconsistent” internal fraud databases, that it relied almost wholly on universities and scientists doing the right thing, and was in breach of its own national code.
The ANAO report comes as a taxpayer-funded research paper into a cutting-edge anti-ageing molecule – led by University of NSW scientists – was retracted due to concerns over possible copied images.
The report found that the NHMRC had not overseen a single investigation into suspected grant fraud, despite funding at least 41 scientific papers that have been pulled from the scientific record in the past 15 years.
When a case of confirmed research fraud was reported to the NHMRC, it failed to report that case to the police, as it is required to do by its own policy. The council did not record a reason why.
The auditor has recommended the NHMRC increase oversight of universities and scientists, including making universities report allegations of fraud to the NHMRC.
Professor Lyle Gurrin, a University of Melbourne biostatistician who has published on research integrity, said that could prompt a shake-up in the way research fraud and misconduct is policed in Australia.
“I would expect that would have ramifications for every institution receiving funding from the NHMRC,” Gurrin said.
“It seems weird they are doling out $1.5 billion in grants and yet, as far as I can see, there is no process to investigate the integrity of the work that is done with those funds.
“That’s the attitude: the best way to prevent fraud is to hope that people don’t do it.”
A spokeswoman for the NHMRC said it was working to address the auditor’s findings.
“The ANAO concluded that NHMRC has appropriate mechanisms in place for internal fraud control, but that there are inadequate mechanisms in place to prevent, detect and investigate fraud risks relating to grant recipients,” she said.
“The audit does not state nor imply that institutional fraud risk controls are inadequate, or that undetected fraud is occurring in health and medical research.”
‘No reliable or accurate data’
The NHMRC oversees research integrity in Australia. Under its code for responsible research, universities must immediately warn it when there are allegations of fraud.
But in practice, the auditor found, the NHMRC had allowed universities to keep things to themselves unless they decided to launch a formal investigation. Even then, the university was not required to hand the investigative report over.
“As a result, the NHMRC does not have accurate or reliable data upon which to properly assess grant-related fraud risks,” the auditor warns.
The report found that the NHMRC has not overseen a single investigation into suspected grant fraud, despite funding at least 41 scientific papers that have been pulled from the scientific record in the past 15 years.
It maintains two registers of fraud and misconduct in spreadsheets, but they don’t match each other and aren’t fit for purpose, the report found.
Preventing grant fraud almost wholly relied on the “untested assurances” of the scientists and universities it gave the money to, the auditor said. The auditor also found the NHMRC’s 199 staff lacked basic training in stopping fraud – even the ones in charge of preventing it.
The NHMRC received 139 research integrity notifications between 2018 and 2023, according to documents released to this masthead through a freedom of information request.
The report found that when suspected fraud was detected, the agency had no way of investigating it, relying wholly on universities to check if they had misspent taxpayer money. The NHMRC does not check if universities have conducted a proper probe, or get a copy of any investigations that are undertaken.
The only case of fraud it recorded was caught by another research institute, which informed the NHMRC that at least $2.6 million had been spent on research that was never conducted. The NHMRC briefed federal Health Minister Mark Butler on the matter only two weeks after being notified of the fraud. Its brief consisted of a printout of a media release and other newspaper articles.
In another case, an audit of 33 grant applications by researchers discovered 11 were ineligible for funding, despite all passing the NHMRC’s checks. NHMRC staff did not tell the chief executive or risk committee about this, the report found.
Major NHMRC study pulled after copied images discovered
In November, PLOS ONE journal retracted a study led by Dr Nady Braidy, a senior research fellow at the University of NSW, on the potential anti-ageing molecule NAD+. The NHMRC shows he received a $1.5 million grant from it in 2021 to study NAD+.
The study claimed to show NAD+ levels fell as lab rats got older. It has been cited more than 600 times, while NAD+ has exploded as an anti-ageing supplement.
But a note from PLOS ONE’s editors said several of the images in the article, purportedly from different experiments, appeared “similar to each other across two or more figure panels”.
PLOS ONE said the authors had subsequently not provided the underlying data that supported the published results. “As such, PLOS cannot resolve the concerns about the similarities between the articles.”
The retracted Braidy paper was not referred to in the ANAO report. There has not been any suggestion of fraud by Braidy or any of the other authors.
Credit: Illustration: Matt Golding
The NHMRC declined to comment on the case or say whether it would be seeking to recover taxpayer funding, citing privacy concerns.
The University of NSW said it had worked with PLOS ONE to retract the article. It did not answer questions on whether it would be repaying the funding to the NHMRC.
The authors of the article, including Braidy, did not respond to requests for comment.
Do you know more about scientific misconduct? Contact the journalist: liam.mannix@theage.com.au
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