A misconduct survey stirs the pot. An Editorial and Commentary in the 19 June issue of Nature (Nature 453, 957; 2008 and Nature 453, 980–982; 2008) are hotly debated at Nature Network's News and Opinion forum (http://tinyurl.com/5onqpl). In the Commentary, Sandra Titus, director of intramural research at the US Office of Research Integrity, and her colleagues report a survey indicating as many as a thousand unreported instances of misconduct a year.

Could better policies stem this seeming flood? Lynn Howard Ehrle of the Organic Consumers Association writes of the “Faustian pact” in which many university presidents and deans have “accepted posts on corporate boards of directors where they have a primary legal fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders that is in conflict with the mission of the university, their students and patients”.

Other forum participants provide heartfelt personal evidence to support the Nature Editorial's view that “misconduct investigations all too often focus solely on an individual offender, and fail to diagnose the environment that has allowed the misconduct to flourish”.