Faculty Council Revises Plan For Committee On Fraud

The steering committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences revised a proposal for an investigative body on research fraud in order to better protect the rights of accused professors, an official said yesterday.

The proposal, approved by the full Faculty last year, satisfies a federal regulation that universities accepting research funding establish an apparatus to handle cases of alleged research fraud.

Harvard's proposed investigative committee would review the evidence in cases of alleged research fraud and report to the dean of the Faculty who would then take appropriate action.

There has yet to be a case of research fraud in the Faculty but there have been two in the last five years at the Medical School. A recent article by two National Institute of Health officals, which appeared in the Britishjournal Nature, charged wide-spread research fraudat Harvard and Emory University medical schools.

At yesterday's meeting the members of theFaculty's steering committee discussed ways tobetter protect the reputation and rights of thoseprofessors accused of research fraud.

The proposal instructs those involved in theinvestigative process to bear in mind, "Theimportance of protecting the reputations ofindividuals and, to that end, maintainingconfidentiality to the extent that it isappropriate and consistent with other obligationsof the Faculty.

Among other concerns expressed by professorswas that the committee remain non-adversarial andthe review be done by faculty members, said thesteering committee's said the steering committee'sspokesman, John R. Marquand.

"Efforts shall be made to include appropriate,Knowledgeable, and impartial persons preferably,but not necessarily, both from within and withoutthe Faculty" on the committee investigating theallegations, reads the proposal.

Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern StudiesNadav Safran appeared before the closed-doormeeting to suggest changes to the proposed body,Marquand said.

Safran and other faculty members suggestedchanges at a meeting last year of the fullFaculty, and instructed the Faculty's steeringcommittee to revise the plan.

"Professor Safran's suggestions at the meetingof the Faculty, where an initial draft wasdiscussed, were generally very helpful inpreparation of a revised draft," said Marquand,secretary to the Faculty. The revised draftsafeguards the rights of the accused moreexplicitly than did the original plan, Marquandsaid.

In a widely publicized 1985 incident, Safranwas criticized for not disclosing that he hadreceived CIA funding for a Harvard conference onthe Middle East. It was further discovered thatSafran had granted the CIA pre-publication reviewof his latest book on Saudi Arabia. After aninvestigation by the dean of the Faculty, Safranresigned his post as director of the Center forMiddle Eastern Studies.

Safran's case was not handled as researchmisconduct