Image: Manu Friederich

I was sitting next to Agneta Bladh, the chair of the Swedish Research Council, when the conversation over dinner turned to the case of Paolo Macchiarini. You may have heard of the Swiss-born, Italian ‘star surgeon’, who after several investigations was found guilty of scientific misconduct in June 2018 and dismissed from the Karolinska Institutet near Stockholm.

Briefly, Macchiarini had become famous in regenerative medicine for using synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients’ stem cells in trachea transplants. The Lancet, which published several of his papers, praised him as someone who crosses frontiers to innovate, ominously citing the poet T. S. Eliot: “only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go”.

The story makes sobering reading. All three patients who received a transplant in Sweden died. Macchiarini was cleared of research misconduct in 2015, with The Lancet defending him in an editorial. Events came to a head a year later after the nationwide screening of a series (‘The Experiments’) by filmmaker Bosse Lindquist, which provoked a massive response and a crisis of confidence at the Karolinska Institutet. A slew of resignations followed: the Vice-Chancellor, the dean of research and the chair of the university board, and investigations were re-opened. In June 2018, the University found Macchiarini and six others guilty of scientific misconduct, and The Lancet retracted two of his papers.

So, the dinner conversation was animated. We agreed about the role of the media, without which the fraud and misconduct may never have been revealed. However, we disagreed on the lessons that should be learned. Sweden is establishing an independent National Misconduct Board, similar to the US Office of Research Integrity. I argued that an independent body would allow in-depth investigations and fair verdicts, avoiding the obvious conflicts of interests of institutions, journals and funders. Others felt that the universities are in the best position to deal with such accusations, because “it’s their responsibility”. Having returned home to Switzerland, I started to wonder how well the Swiss system was prepared for a case like Paolo Macchiarini. Not too well, I mumbled to myself. Recent events in Switzerland show that we are already at risk. We urgently need a debate on how best to deal with scientific misconduct in this country.

Matthias Egger is the President of the SNSF National Research Council. Let him know what you think by responding to his tweet on this column at @eggersnsf.