Integrity expert Marcel van der Heyden: ‘We are working on a cultural shift’

Ten years ago, PhD candidates at Utrecht University started taking an oath promising to work with integrity and diligence. Since then, the oath has become a regular feature of PhD graduation ceremonies. Initially a stand-alone event, the oath is now the culmination of four years of scientific integrity courses. The four-year Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) course, which is compulsory for all PhD students, is now even being exported abroad.

Marcel van der Heyden is one of the researchers responsible for the integrity courses for PhD students. In 2022, he started the RCR course for the Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS), which has approximately 1,800 PhD candidates. ‘The GSLS had been aware of my activities in the field of detecting publication fraud for some time. Based on this, they concluded that I would be suitable as a coordinator.’

They could use materials from a European project, although they needed to be further developed to match the field of work of the PhD candidates at the GSLS. ‘We aimed for each coordinator to do this for their own audience. Different issues and examples apply to the life sciences, compared to the social sciences.’

Publication pressure
A year before the first PhD candidate took the oath in Utrecht, a report by the Education Inspectorate had already identified a lack of ethical training among PhD students. The inspectorate highlighted several perverse incentives within PhD programmes. For example, PhD candidates are often required to publish three, four or even five times in a scientific journal, which leads to 'publication pressure'  and 'the urge to score', in the words of the inspectorate.

The integrity education programme designed by Van der Heyden and his colleagues focuses on 'discussability'. The lectures and modules cannot eliminate the perverse incentives, but PhD candidates can learn their options when they find themselves in a moral grey area. 'The most important thing about this programme is that people engage in a dialogue.'

Authorship
In the first three years of the PhD programme, Van der Heyden and other lecturers discuss the dilemmas that PhD students may encounter, which include issues within the publication process, debates surrounding diversity and inclusion, patient and animal-related research, collaborations with other research groups, and cultural differences. The dilemmas are discussed using a comprehensive reflection model, whose core enables students to identify exactly what they are struggling with, who they can turn to, what solutions are available, and what the consequences of those solutions are.

Van der Heyden also contributes solutions himself, but more often as options rather than as imperatives. Take the issue of authorship, which he believes is 'always a hot topic'. Many scientists want to be named as the author of a publication, even if in reality they have contributed little or nothing.

'If you have a conflict with your supervisor because they want something in terms of authorship that you don't agree with – for example, putting someone on your publication who really has nothing to do with it – you can say that you don't want that, but you can also say that you have looked at the journal's rules and seen that it is actually not allowed. That way, you don't place the responsibility for saying no on yourself.'

The oath
The fourth year of RCR education focuses on the oath that PhD students take upon graduation. Many leave academia after obtaining a PhD title, which, according to Van der Heyden, makes the oath a good starting point for debates. ‘Wherever you go, the important principles remain the same.’

Some of the GSLS PhD students go on to work in the corporate world, where scientific integrity can be crucial, as Van der Heyden demonstrates in his lectures with an example from Medicine: a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine from 1980, in which a doctor describes how virtually none of the nearly 12,000 patients who were given painkillers in hospitals developed an addiction.

‘The industry used this as an advertising tool. It started marketing painkillers very aggressively to general practitioners in America.’ They did that despite the fact that the letter related to hospital care, not to general practitioner care. And that wasn't even the only criticism it received. The aggressive marketing campaign carried out by the pharmaceutical industry was one of the major causes of the American opioid crisis, which has claimed the lives of approximately 800,000 people this century. ‘Scientists also work for these companies. How can they act ethically in such a context?’

Since PhD students can end up in all kinds of places, the dilemmas discussed in the fourth year can be very domestic. ‘If your uncle says at the Christmas dinner that scientists are spreading nonsense, do you feel compelled to disagree? When should you do that, and when shouldn't you? Should you only react when it concerns your own field of expertise?’ There are no easy answers for such questions, but thinking about them prepares PhD candidates for these kinds of situations.

International network
Van der Heyden has observed that PhD students who have completed the RCR training and taken the oath are contributing to a global cultural shift that is long overdue. After all, integrity issues aren't as debated in many other countries as they are in the Netherlands. 'I recently exchanged emails with a scientist from China who obtained his PhD in Leiden. We have done several joint projects in the past. He is now working with his own research group in China, where labs deal with rules slightly differently or threaten to interpret them differently. And those are euphemisms. This is now causing him problems, because they are his direct competitors for several grants.'

'Sometimes, students have already encountered a scientific culture that may be well-intentioned but not entirely ethical before they start their PhD programme. For example, a PhD student from Mexico once told me that a lab where he used to work would routinely put the names of all employees on publications. If you look at the rules, that's obviously not allowed.'

Utrecht's integrity courses are not only exported by individual PhD students, but also by Van der Heyden himself. ‘I have been a visiting professor in Vienna for some time, and a scientific advisor to one of their research schools for the past two or three years. That's why I thought that it would be nice to see if RCR education would also catch on in Vienna. I asked the dean if they were interested, and they were.’

Because the integrity rules in Austria are not fundamentally different from those in the Netherlands, it was not difficult to bring the UU programme to the lecture halls in Vienna. The only thing Van der Heyden noticed when he taught the first year of the course last year was that Vienna has a more hierarchical culture. ‘They have more of a Herr Professor culture there.’ Nevertheless, PhD students mostly react in the same way to the course. ‘The course is greatly appreciated in Vienna as well.’

Going with the flow
Students in both Utrecht and Vienna tell Van der Heyden that their supervisors could also benefit from the courses, so he is currently talking to UU to set up integrity courses for PhD supervisors as well. However, he would rather see everyone who does research receive such training.

‘I do take into account that everyone is extremely busy and doesn't want to take yet another course. The content must be genuinely useful. It shouldn't just be about ticking another box.’ He is also considering approaching colleagues in Bordeaux so that the course can be established there as well.

Van der Heyden believes that his work is bearing fruit. ‘I certainly don't think that our education is pointless. We're opening more and more issues up to discussion, and many people come to me for advice. Not only PhD students, but also group departments, which shows me that we are initiating a cultural shift and things are improving.’