Every researcher in the Netherlands is to be questioned about whether she has committed research misconduct or engaged in “sloppy science” in a major national effort to bolster scientific standards. In response to rising concerns over a “reproducibility crisis” in science and a series of high-profile fraud cases, the country is to commit €8 million (Rs.59 crore) to understanding the problem, finding solutions and trying to reproduce critical studies.

Lex Bouter, professor of methodology and integrity at VU Amsterdam and one of the driving forces behind the initiative, says that “during the past 10 years we had three to four really serious wake-up calls” about scientific misconduct in the Netherlands. The most prominent is the case of Diederik Stapel, who was sacked by Tilburg University in 2011 for fabricating data, and who left a trail of fraudulent social psychology papers.

There are two parts to the Dutch investigation into research integrity: a €5 million programme called Fostering Responsible Research Practices, which will include a €1.2 million national survey of researchers and €2.7 million research grants into the area, and a €3 million pot to fund replication studies of important “cornerstone” research that has been relied on to make policy or has attracted considerable media attention. The programmes are set to be signed off soon and calls for proposals are expected before the end of the summer.

The mass survey of researchers in the Netherlands will encompass all disciplines, including humanities scholars, who, like scientists, can be “selective” in their use of sources, says Bouter. The anonymised results will be reported back to universities so they can judge the extent of the problem. According to him, this is an overdue initiative. A metastudy found that 2 percent of scientists admitted to having “fabricated, falsified or modified data or results,” although Prof. Bouter says this is likely to be a “gross underestimate”.