The research climate is not always stable, and some of us are left to face instabilities without any knowledge of how to manage them. How did you handle your first case of scientific fraud? Can you apply the human subject protection rules to every situation? Did you ever hear the question, What is IACUC? Or wondered if any of your colleagues care about the meaning behind the Conflict of Interest Form?

Francis Macrina's book Scientific Integrity: An Introductory Text with Case Studies answers some of these questions and introduces us to the philosophies and rules surrounding most of the major research compliance issues. He provides detailed chapters on human subject protection issues, use of animals in experimentation, scientific misconduct, intellectual property, and conflicts of interest.

Since the text is primarily aimed at graduate students, it also includes chapters on mentoring, authorship, and scientific note taking. Still, every chapter carries the same central message: A real scientist should follow the rules and ask questions when the rules are nebulous.

Macrina explains what it's like to be a scientist struggling to compete with peers, and why scientists sometimes appear to break commonly accepted ethical rules of scientific research or, on occasion, why they are tempted to break the rules deliberately. Administrators who read this book might take off their administration hats and put on a scientist's hat to consider such issues from a different perspective. Macrina does not excuse ill behavior, but warns that the science world unfortunately has a few inherently disreputable people in it and, given the pressures to succeed, right is sometimes subsumed by wrong.

Macrina also addresses the judges - the people tasked with deciding if a person has really broken the rules. He makes clear the need for objective oversight and quiet investigation. This discussion should lead to better understanding and better management of potential real-life cases.

The chapter "Ethics and the Scientist" provides an excellent introduction to basic ethics. People familiar with Kant might find this chapter superfluous and can move on to other chapters. Even people unfamiliar with Kant might find this chapter uninspiring, but if the terms "utilitarianism" and "deontology" have little meaning, it would be a good idea to spend some time studying this chapter before reading the rest of the book.

Overall, Macrina efficiently communicates his central theme. Each chapter defines a concept, relates it to the world of scientific research, supports it with prevailing philosophies and laws, and ends with a set of challenging case studies. Macrina does not answer all the questions, but encourages scientists to trust their instincts as leaders and experts in the scientific world and also in the nonscientific and business worlds.

For instance, in the chapter "Managing Conflicting Interests," Macrina discusses the tempting issues of receiving multiple pay for one job and accepting expensive gifts from vendors as inducement to use their services. The same chapter includes discussions of scientific conflicts of interest that arise when serving on peer-review panels, scientists as expert witnesses, and gifts versus gratuities. Macrina shows how scientists, as influential members of society, can be influenced by money and the desire for recognition. He draws the fine line between acceptable and questionable behavior, then asks us to do our homework before rushing into something and making a mistake.

Naturally, veteran scientists and administrators alike may find themselves wishing to insert comments where the author might have inserted them if his audience had been experienced researchers rather than graduate students, but his intent is not lost. Anyone with both good and inherently bad traits would gain a heightened sense of integrity in their work by reading this book. The instruction may not make the disreputable among us good, but it will surely make the fundamentally good individuals better. Just think of what that can do for the well-read scientist and his colleagues.

The next time you hold a meeting for your laboratory staff and graduate students to teach them about research ethics issues, try out some of the useful case studies at the end of most chapters. For instance, how should an IACUC member respond if the committee suddenly disapproves an animal protocol that it has always approved, leaving the applicant with years of data assembled using this same procedure? What if a graduate student gets recruited to work at a private company because of the techniques she learned in her mentor's lab? These are some of the challenges presented. In other cases, however, people unfamiliar with laboratory science and procedures may find some of the case studies difficult to understand.

If you can, convince the dean to buy copies of this book to pass out to faculty and to all members of your compliance committees. And make sure the dean keeps a copy for herself, even if it just fills that space on the bookshelf just above her head.