Scientific integrity, between Scylla and Charybdis

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Scientific integrity is not a morality to be brandished against the enemy of the moment . It is a system of rules, tools and procedures designed to correct scientific literature , guarantee the reliability of results, protect the credibility of knowledge. When it becomes a combat weapon, as it is now called even in official contexts, it turns into a problem: not for fraudsters, but for science. The logic is perverse: integrity is invoked not to repair errors, but to attack people. The case of the former president of Harvard, forced to resign after accusations of plagiarism already examined and deemed not serious, has shown how a polarized ideological context and a coordinated media push are enough to transform a bibliographic anomaly into a political weapon. In other cases, parliamentary hearings, anonymous letters or posts on Substack are used to attack individual researchers, chosen not for the extent of the violations but for their exposure on controversial topics.

The story is not new: the tobacco industry has set a precedent. For decades it has discredited research on the harmful effects of smoking by invoking “methodological rigor,” selecting apparently neutral experts, and building an entire pseudo-integrated rhetoric around the concept of “good science.” More recently, similar dynamics have also been observed in the fields of nutrition, climate, and pharmacology. In all these cases, the defense of truth has been used as a cover for economic or ideological interests. But the problem is not only who attacks. It is also who remains silent. The weaponization of integrity finds space because the institutions responsible for protecting scientific ethics often do not work. Universities open opaque and inconclusive proceedings, journals procrastinate for years before retracting manifestly fraudulent articles, ethics committees simply stall for time. In many cases, the obvious fraudsters continue their careers undisturbed, publishing, directing, receiving funding.

Here, then, is the real crux: today there are two opposite poles, both lethal for scientific integrity. On one side, the Scylla that we call weaponization: accusations transformed into an instrument of political or personal struggle, often conducted without public evidence, without cross-examination, without limits. On the other, Charybdis, or impunity: the systematic inability or reluctance to correct the literature even when the fraud is evident, to protect whistleblowers, to stop repeat offenders. Science, the real one, the one that is based on verification and self-correction, is crushed in the middle.

In this distorted system, neither the one who reports nor the one who is reported wins. The scientific community as a whole loses. It loses transparency, because every investigation seems driven by ulterior motives. It loses the trust of the public, who witness summary trials on Twitter and then discover that universities do nothing. It loses young science, which learns to keep quiet, to avoid uncomfortable topics, to live with injustice as if it were a necessary evil.

To truly defend integrity, we need to get out of this trap . Accusations must follow documented, transparent, verifiable paths. Investigations must have certain timeframes, public outcomes, proportionate sanctions. Institutions must take responsibility for correcting the scientific record — not only when it is convenient, not only when there is an outcry. And those responsible for fraud, if they have violated the law, will answer to ordinary justice. But no one should replace the right with insult, or retraction with public stoning; and the instrumental use of accusations of violation of integrity must become part of the bad conduct against which to proceed. Science needs rigor and corrections, not revenge and frustration. And it needs, more than ever, a system of integrity that is such in method and in facts, not just in name and on paper.

We must overcome Scylla and Charybdis .

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