责任指数

武夷山

2009年1月29日出版的《自然》周刊发表社评，A responsibility index（责任指数）。文章说：

如何测度一个国家的科学诚信呢？不妨建立一个责任指数，它包含四组指标。

第一组指标反映一个国家不端行为（做假、编造数据、剽窃等）的发生率。

第二组指标反映一个国家在绩效评价、科研资助、人员任用和职称提升等方面的透明性和客观性。

第三组指标用于评价一个国家的科技政策框架，看看这个框架在多大程度上允许科学家根据自己的兴趣开展研究，同时又要给与社会价值和经济需求一定的优先考虑（博主：讲究两分法，而不是一刀切）。

第四组指标反映一个国家的开放程度。

博主：迄今，这样的指数尚未问世，谢天谢地！如果现在就用这样的指数来评价各个国家，搞不好中国会比较靠后。

在2011年的全球清廉指数（原文是“腐败指数”，但它是按照腐败程度从轻到重排列的。译为“清廉指数”，不易引起误解）排行榜上，中国排在183个国家或地区的第75位（http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Rankings）。尽管这个排行榜也许有种种偏颇，排行榜编制者也许有意识形态偏见，但只要我们正确对待，它仍旧可以有参考价值。

如果我们GDP排名很好，SCI论文数排名很好，但清廉指数或责任指数排名靠后，那肯定是令人遗憾的。

那篇社评全文如下：

Nature 457, 512 (29 January 2009) | doi:10.1038/457512a; Published online 28 January 2009

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Abstract

How to evaluate a nation's scientific integrity.

If there was one word that resonated above all at this week's Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was 'trust'. Given the context of the meeting — a disastrous meltdown of the world financial system — the assembled chief executives of international companies and institutions might have found this something of a sick joke. But Saudi Arabia has set itself the goal of strong international competitiveness, and in the past year has climbed the rankings of competitiveness as measured by the World Economic Forum from 35th to 27th position. It also wants to promote a national climate and international perception of good corporate behaviour — a goal in which trust is essential.

Like many emerging countries, Saudi Arabia measures itself by indices, and has developed its own index for 'responsible competitiveness', based on a number of metrics (see http://www.rci.org.sa). But fostering strong science-based innovation requires its own metrics of inputs and achievement. So here, for any country concerned about the reputation and integrity of its research base, are some metrics that might be developed into an index for responsible scientific competitiveness.

One set of metrics relates to misconduct such as fraud, fabrication and plagiarism, which can gravely damage a country's reputation and destroy that of any researcher caught in its immediate wake, let alone the perpetrators. Two responsibility metrics would therefore relate to the infrastructures in place for the prevention and to the investigation, punishment and open declaration of misconduct. The latter metric, in turn, would look at the investigatory mechanisms in place at both the national funding-agency level, and the local level of publicly funded universities and government labs.

Less headline-grabbing misbehaviour is also important. As discussions about scientifically developed countries in this publication have shown, human nature and pressures to deliver results lead to worrying levels of discreet sleaze — the selection or cleaning up of data, the addition or removal of names from author lists and the like. This can only be treated in culture, by the education of young researchers in good practice, by the reward of good mentoring, by the scrutiny and preservation of lab notebooks, and the insistent emphasis of guidelines. Such institutional encouragement of good practice is easy to document as a metric, albeit in short supply in most countries.

A second set of metrics would measure the transparency and objectivity of a nation's systems of evaluation, funding, staff appointments and promotion. A system that discriminates against researchers on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, age or cronyism is short-sighted and will gravely undermine the scientific potential of any nation.

A third set would evaluate a nation's framework for science policy, and the extent to which it allows talented scientists to follow their noses in the pursuit of what makes the world tick while also giving societal values and economic needs their due priority.

And a final set would measure the elusive concept of 'openness' — a key corollary of trust. Openness implies a receptivity to the ideas and practices of researchers in other countries, especially valuable given the evidence that international collaborations are more powerful generators of strong science than those that are intra-national. But openness is also expressed as a willingness to have ideas and conclusions publicly criticized — a culture essential to science itself, but also to the successful pursuit of a robust strategic policy and hence to international confidence.

Taken together, these qualitative metrics would amount to an index of responsible science for any country, whatever its stage of scientific development. They could be measured by the documentation of structures and practices and by independent surveys of scientists. A study of the state of openness and development in Arab countries (N. Fergany Nature 444, 33–34; 2006) showed that Saudi Arabia in 2005 was starting from a low base. Since then, support for education, uptake by women of tertiary education and support for science have experienced significant growth. We leave it to the Saudis and to researchers and policy-makers in other ambitious technological powers to reflect on just how well their countries measure up across these metrics of responsible scientific competitiveness.