The Swiss Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity was issued in 2021. In November 2024, a Swiss National Competence Centre for Scientific Integrity was also founded. | Photo: Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences.

Everyone’s under major pressure to publish, and AI makes it easier to fake articles. And politics all over the world is getting increasingly polarised. Under such conditions, integrity in science becomes all the more important. In November 2024, the Swiss University Conference decided to set up a National Competence Centre for Scientific Integrity, as reported by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences that’s going to host it.

For the first-ever time, Switzerland will have a central office to advise universities and help to ensure that the Swiss Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity (published back in 2021) is more broadly disseminated. “The Competence Centre will be a reporting office where data on compliance with scientific integrity will be gathered, thereby providing a comprehensive overview of the situation in Switzerland and enabling international comparisons to be made”, write the Academies. The Competence Centre will comprise an administrative office and a council, with the Emeritus Professor Edwin Constable of the University of Basel as its founding president.

“The conduct and products of science, their use in decision making, and their communication must be shielded from political interference”.U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Other countries are also upgrading their efforts. For example, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has replaced its ombudsman with an independent association named the ‘Ombudspeople’s committee for scientific integrity’. The committee’s funding, provided by the DFG, has also been institutionalised. The DFG is confident that these measures “clearly emphasise the value of good scientific practice and scholarly integrity as a prerequisite for Germany as a centre of excellence in science”.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also drafted a new document entitled Scientific Integrity Policy – just before Donald Trump assumed the Presidency once again. If trust in science is to thrive, states the document, then “the conduct and products of science, their use in decision making, and their communication must be shielded from political interference”.

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