Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 23 January 2024

A Discussion was convened by videoconference. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Ms Alison Rose, N, was presiding, with the Registrary’s deputy, the Senior Proctor, the Junior Pro‑Proctor and two other persons present.

Remarks were received as follows:
 

Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, dated 6 December 2023, on a revised procedure for the investigation of an allegation of research misconduct

(Reporter, 6721, 2023–24, p. 172).

Mr G. P. Allen (Wolfson College), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I should begin by declaring that until 2015 I was, as Academic Secretary, responsible for overseeing the current procedure on research misconduct. It is certainly overdue for review in the light of changing circumstances, particularly the requirements of the University’s numerous funding partners, and experience of operating the current procedure. Nevertheless I take it that the Board and Council are satisfied that the scale of the matter justifies translating the current four-page statement on the web into twenty pages of Report, and Special Ordinances, followed by an Annex and an Appendix to the Annex. Those colleagues who regularly complain in this House about the growth in the central administration might reflect on this example of growth in administrative complexity and burden.

Turning to the substance, there are aspects to be welcomed including the clear definitions of what does, and does not, constitute research misconduct, and the tabulation of roles and responsibilities. Fortunately, I encountered very few cases of the serious misconduct as set out in the table of definitions, instead cases usually involved sloppy research methodology or flaws in data interpretation and presentation which could be fairly easily remedied.

More worryingly and stressful for all concerned were cases which stemmed from disputes, sometimes long running, between research supervisors, students, and sometime collaborators or competitors. The addition of a dispute resolution process to the proposed procedure appears a welcome alternative and less formal avenue for addressing those cases.

Thirdly, the current procedure states that individuals investigating allegations need to have ‘… the appropriate qualifications and experience in the relevant field to be able to evaluate the issues under investigation’. In contrast the proposed new procedure says an Independent Investigator must have ‘appropriate expertise to investigate the case’. Perhaps that should be amended to make clear that ‘appropriate’ must include experience in the relevant field as well as experience of the more generic aspects of investigating complaints. I think that might provide helpful reassurance for respondents, for whom the process may prove very stressful.

Finally, I note that the Report has been signed by only eight of the fourteen members of the General Board – would the Board care to comment with reference to Statute A X 4?

Dr D. D. K. Chow (Trinity College), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I broadly welcome the improvements to the proposed procedure and the implementation of the Concordat to Support Research Integrity.

Paragraph 4.8 states that ‘If a Complaint is found to be malicious or vexatious at any stage of the procedure, appropriate action may be taken against the Complainant, which may in some cases include disciplinary action’. No further details are given, such as how Complainants will be investigated or what ‘appropriate action’ may entail. This is in contrast to the rest of the procedure, which specifies in detail a Complaint’s investigation. One effect of Paragraph 4.8 may be to encourage Complaints to be made anonymously to avoid possible reprisal, negating the Paragraph A2.1 statement that ‘Complainants are encouraged to put their name to any Complaint’. Commitment 5 of the Concordat requires that the University provides an annual ‘statement on how the institution creates and embeds a research environment in which all staff, researchers and students feel comfortable to report instances of misconduct’. The tone of Paragraph 4.8 and corresponding Paragraph 4.6, threatening Complainants with disciplinary action, are not consistent with the intentions of Concordat Commitment 5 and are unhelpful for breaking the silence about academic misconduct, or indeed any other form of misconduct.

The proposed procedure is directly applicable to only a small fraction of research relating to the University, since Statute J gives high autonomy to the Press (and Assessment Department) and therefore to research published by the Press. The Concordat applies to all research-related activities done by researchers, irrespective of whether the research is conducted by the researchers themselves or not (the Concordat explicitly mentions peer review and publication, for example). To maintain the University’s research reputation, the research-related activities of the Press must be consistent with the Concordat and the wider University, having a clear chain of accountability up to the Council. To guarantee these standards, can the Council confirm that researchers, as defined by Paragraph 2.1 but not employed under Statute J 6, who undertake activities related to the Press, such as management and peer review, are subject to the proposed procedure and are not exempt through the delegation to the Syndicate specified in Statute J 2?

Paragraphs 9.8 and 10.5 specify procedures for communicating delays in the timescales for Stages 2 and 3, but this is lacking in Paragraph 8.6 for Stage 1. I recently discovered this weakness of the procedure after formally submitting concerns of plagiarism to the University. In September 2022, I was informed that the matter was being considered through the Misconduct in Research procedure, with a promise to ‘update you further in due course’, but have received no communication since. This delay of over 300 working days far exceeds the proposed 15 working days for Stage 1. I have also not received acknowledgement from the relevant head of the University institution concerned, despite the concerns being originally sent to the relevant head. Proper communication is important for maintaining confidence in the system, but my experience indicates that such communication needs to be formalised in the procedure, otherwise timescales will be unbounded. Paragraph 8.6 should be worded similarly to Paragraphs 9.8 and 10.5, and there should be a timescale for acknowledgement of receipt of Complaints.

Professor G. R.Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Senior Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this Report describes a procedure intended to replace the current University Misconduct in Research Policy to be found on the HR website,1 raising it to Special Ordinance level but without including a definition of the ‘misconduct’ in question. It would have been helpful to have had that expressly defined in the Statutes and Ordinances. The Statutes and Ordinances for 2023, just published for the year, contains 86 mentions of various possible ‘misconduct’, by students, University officers and others, including twelve mentions of ‘academic misconduct’ with only one mention of ‘non-academic misconduct’. ‘Academic misconduct’ is defined at length under the Rules of Behaviour for Registered Students and Formerly Registered Students at paragraph 4(h), including conduct clearly constituting misconduct in research but not defined as such there. Human Resources carries on its website a general definition of ‘misconduct in research’ which has not been Graced. The present Report intends to tidy things up constitutionally with this detailed Grace.

In these new proposals ‘Responsible Person’ appears in the documentation 101 times. The powers and responsibilities to be accorded them are considerably enlarged beyond mentions of such persons in the Statutes and Ordinances. There, under the Schedule to Statute C, ‘Responsible Persons’ have a place in relation to the ‘academic staff’, but that means only the University Officers to whom the Education Reform Act of 1988 continues directly to apply. Special Ordinance C (ii) also mentions Responsible Persons under Grievances, for which a revised procedure was Graced some years ago.

The still imperfectly addressed question of the nature of the gulf between established and unestablished academic posts complicates things further. ‘In the case of a University officer, the Responsible Person shall refer the matter to the Vice-Chancellor’ who will determine whether the procedure in the Schedule to Statute C2 should be followed. For unestablished members of staff the Responsible Person shall refer to the Respondent’s Head of Institution.

The Responsible Person who is to supervise this new procedure has a very broad but imprecise definition as:

the head of the University institution in which the research misconduct is alleged to have occurred, or where the person against whom the allegation has been made is not a member of a University institution, the Chair of the Board, Syndicate, or other body which is chiefly concerned with that person’s research, or a person appointed by the Academic Secretary,

avoiding conflict of interest.

If more than one University ‘institution’ is involved, or in the event of doubt, ‘the Secretary of the Process will decide who is the Responsible Person’. This Secretary is another significant figure in the process. The choice of Secretary will depend on the employment status of the potential individual Respondents. In the case of assistant staff it shall be the Secretary of the Human Resources Committee. Otherwise, depending on the institution involved, the Secretary of the Process will be the Registrary or the Academic Secretary. His or her decision will be final.

There is to be provision for Appeal, requiring the creation of another new figure. An Appeal Manager gets 17 mentions. This is to be a University Officer appointed by the Academic Secretary and ‘of seniority equivalent to or greater than the Responsible Person’, and shall determine any appeal against a decision of a Responsible Person.

‘Responsible Persons’ will be making not only recommendations but some very important ‘decisions’, including to ‘exclude the Respondent from some or all of the University’s facilities and/or premises; to ‘impose conditions’ on the Respondent’s ‘use of the University’s facilities and/or premises or the Respondent’s contact with others, or in such other ways as the Responsible Person may consider necessary’; ‘to suspend the Respondent from work or study either in full or in part’; ‘to refer the allegation for consideration under a dispute resolution process’. The Responsible Person also has powers to commission a preliminary investigation, to ‘determine that there is sufficient evidence’ to ‘commission a formal investigation’ by a Formal Investigation Committee and then to determine whether the findings warrant instigating whatever disciplinary procedure is applicable to the Respondent.

Eligibility for ‘dispute resolution’ under the new procedure is to depend on the matter being susceptible to resolution by the agreement of a Complainant and a Respondent where the dispute concerns a matter such as failing to include someone’s name in a multi-author article. It must also be possible for it to be put right once there is an agreement.

For this purpose a form of ‘mediation’ is proposed. Under Special Ordinance C (xii) the Grievance Procedure on mediation mentions a ‘person responsible’,3 referring to the ‘University’s internal mediation service’. This is run by HR, and a Mediation Co-ordinator allocates the mediator.4 Two such Coordinators’ are identified by HR.5

Under the present proposed procedure the Responsible Person is to be in charge, appointing ‘an independent person to conduct the process’, normally a University Officer with relevant expertise and no conflict of interest or personal involvement. This person is to be supplied with ‘administrative support’, which may be provided by the Research Governance Integrity Team or another suitably qualified member of University administrative staff. The independent person should also take advice from the HR Division and/or, for cases involving students, the Student Conduct, Complaints and Appeals Office, as required’. The participants must fend for themselves.

If this mediation reaches no agreement the investigator will write an account for the Responsible Person with a recommendation ‘as to how the matter is best resolved’. That is to be decided by the Responsible Person who will tell the Respondent and/or Complainant what they are now expected to do. If the Complainant does not comply the case is closed. If the Respondent ‘refuses to follow the actions required by the Responsible Person, the Responsible Person may refer the matter for consideration under another University procedure, including but not limited to the Research Misconduct Procedure’. If the Respondent or Complainant disputes the conclusions ‘they may make written representations to the Secretary of the Process’ within ten working days. ‘The Secretary of the Process will consider their review, and may, in exceptional circumstances, require the Responsible Person to reconsider the matter.’

‘Parties’ under the proposed Procedure are variously described as ‘both parties’, ‘all parties’, ‘relevant parties’ and ‘third parties’ having ‘a legitimate interest’ (including other ‘employing institutions’). Is not the University a party?

The procedure requires ‘training’ for the Responsible Persons, members of a Formal Investigation Committee and the Appeal Managers. Is a day’s training provided by HR really going to provide them with an adequate grounding? Experience suggests that such training may not go very deep or embed ‘justice and fairness’ as firmly as the University is required to do under the Education Reform Act of 1988.

 

Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, dated 10 January 2024, on changes to Statute B I on non‑payment of University Composition Fees and resignation of membership of the University

(Reporter, 6724, 2023–24, p. 213).

Dr M. J. Rutter (Department of Physics):

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on resignation of membership of the University slips in a rather fundamental change to the constitution of this University. It proposes that someone should be able to resign membership of the University without resigning any degrees held.

Admitto te ad gradum... A complete degree is precisely a grade of membership. They cannot be decoupled. Nor should one wish to.

Who would want to claim to be so disgusted with the University as to wish to resign from it, but still wish to use the postnominals ‘M.A. (Cantab)’? It would be a nonsense.

Why would we ever wish to say that someone is so despicable as to be expelled from the University, but is still worthy to use postnominals ‘M.A. (Cantab)’?

Is my thinking lost in mediævalism? No. Being a Chartered Physicist, I am entitled to write C.Phys. after my name, and this might be professionally beneficial. However, should I choose to resign from the Institute of Physics, or should I be expelled from it, then I could no longer do so. That is an accepted feature of all chartered professions – one can claim the postnominals only whilst one is a member of the relevant body and fulfills whatever other conditions might be relevant. There is no reason for Cambridge to be any different.

Resignations, or expulsions, should be rare. They are a serious matter. They should not be inconsequential. It is hard to see a situation in which removal of University membership is ‘appropriate and necessary’, and yet it is still appropriate for the person concerned to claim a Cambridge degree. A degree is a higher grade of membership than that conferred on a matriculating undergraduate. Either it is ‘appropriate and necessary’ to reduce someone to below the status of an undergraduate, or it is not.

Much of this Report concerns penalties for non-payment of tuition fees. That it should be possible to withdraw or suspend access to a course, or to withhold conferral of an award, seems fair. I am much less convinced that a penalty of depriving of membership of the University seems fair, particularly if the person concerned has already successfully completed, and fully funded, a previous course. There is a mention of ‘extenuating circumstances’, but I fear that in many cases there may be a dispute between the individual and the Board about whether circumstances are ‘extenuating’.

The Report suggests that a student in arrears with fees may be suspended from ‘all University activities, facilities and premises’. This sort of sanction has raised issues in the past. Does this include University premises open to the general public, including its museums and cafés? What if the student resides in University, rather than College, accommodation? May the student visit friends who reside in University accommodation? What if the research group of a graduate student would find such a suspension disruptive to its work and does not support the sanction? Nor is it entirely clear to what extent a student suffering from unexpectedly changed financial or personal circumstances would be able to withdraw voluntarily from a course in order to avoid further sanction for unpaid fees.

The proposed change to Ordinance makes it clear that non-payment may result in the withholding of admission to a degree or the withholding of the award of a certificate or diploma. The Policy and Guidance documents make no mention of this outcome. Is this not, in most cases, the greatest sanction and deterrent? If we add to it with deprivation of membership, do we suggest that financial failure is more serious than academic failure, and is that the correct approach for an academic institution?

The Report considers whether third parties might penalise people who, whilst they once met all the criteria, including academic, for holding a degree, no longer do. I do not see that we are responsible for the actions of third parties. Some third parties may over-value academic qualifications, in that qualifications obtained decades ago may no longer reflect a person’s current knowledge and abilities. Third parties who treat a degree currently held as a guarantee of current academic worth are deceiving themselves, and should think carefully before discriminating between those who once held a degree, but no longer do, and those who continue to hold one.

Perhaps the University should consider whether other sanctions might be available to it, such as the degrading of an Honours degree to an Ordinary degree, or the degrading of a Masters degree to a Bachelors degree, or a temporary suspension. The ultimate sanction of permanent deprivation of membership must imply the loss of all complete degrees. There is no reason to create an inconsistent muddle over the nature of such a degree.

But there may be a middle way. A Grace of 1921 extended titular degrees to those who met the academic requirements for the corresponding complete degree, but who failed other requirements. These degrees confer none of the rights of full degrees, save for the right to use the corresponding letters after one’s name. The practice of barring ladies from University membership, and thus from complete degrees, ceased in 1948, but the University still awards titular degrees, for that is what honorary degrees are. Admitto te [...] ad titulum gradus... One could argue that this is precisely what the Report proposes, reducing complete degrees to titular degrees, but it lacks an explicit mention of this point.

Perhaps there are cases in which an individual should lose membership of the University, but be awarded titular degrees corresponding to those complete degrees previously held? The current mechanism for awarding titular degrees, Statute A II 14, describes honorary degrees. This power would need modifying, but the concept of a titular degree is not novel.

I note that the Report appears to say nothing about the holding of Offices which imply membership of the University, that is to say Established Offices and College Fellowships. If someone who has been deprived of membership of the University were to gain an Established Office or a College Fellowship, what would happen? It also says nothing about College membership, which would presumably be unaffected by loss of University membership. Indeed, one might start to wonder whether loss of University membership, but retention of degrees, is any sanction at all. Outside of this institution, does anyone care who is, or is not, a current member of this, or any other, University? If it implies the loss of alumni ‘rights’, such as being contacted periodically by the Alumni Office, some might consider the loss to be a gain.

Finally I note that this Report retains the position that it is not possible to resign a degree without also resigning one’s membership of the University. This restriction does not seem necessary, and it is not inconceivable that someone might wish to resign some, or all, degrees held without resigning membership. I think in particular of those who hold degrees by incorporation, or by virtue of Office once held, and who have subsequently decided to argue against such practices. There is no reason why we must accommodate such a wish, but I see no particularly strong reason against either. If Statute B is to be modified, it might be appropriate to consider being more flexible in this regard.

Professor G. R.Evans (Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History), read by the Junior Pro‑Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the proposal to allow the General Board to ‘withdraw or suspend access to a course, withdraw membership of the University or withhold conferment of an award’ raises some fundamental questions about the relationship between membership of the University and the holding of its degrees. At present the two are inseparable. Statute B I 2 says that

Resignation entails cancellation of any degree. Renunciation of a degree entails resignation of membership of the University.

Several reasons are given for the proposal in this Report to ‘sever the link between membership of the University and the holding of degrees from the University’. These are ‘compassionate’ in character, being based on the need to avoid damage to someone’s career prospects which could be expected to arise from taking away an existing Cambridge degree on resignation of membership of the University. If the decision to resign membership lies with the individual, is it not that individual’s responsibility to decide whether to accept the consequence of the loss of any degree held?

This Report overlaps slightly with the one discussed just now. From time to time the Reporter publishes the outcome of a case where a student has been accused of misconduct in research, though the student or students involved are not named. A postgraduate student who is a graduate may be found guilty of such misconduct, with the removal of his or her degree a possible sanction.

For example the Discipline Committee met on 20 April 2018 to consider a charge a student had made ‘use of unfair means in a Ph.D. thesis as part of an examination for the Doctor of Philosophy’. The Committee ruled that the student ‘be suspended for a period of six months, only to be reinstated following: resubmission and successful examination of a corrected thesis; the writing of letters of apology to the author of the plagiarised work and the Examiners; and evidence of steps taken to correct other published works’.1

So in that case the sanctions did not include the removal of the student’s first degree and this Report suggests that ‘the removal of a first degree for academic misconduct that took place during study for a second degree would likewise be undesirable’. The present proposal gives the reasons that removal as ‘a disciplinary sanction’ may be ‘unfair’ and ‘could be open to legal challenge’. What legal risk is envisaged given that the Statutes and Ordinances comply with the law of the land?

So perhaps today’s two Reports could be considered side by side in the Council’s Notice in reply? And could it say something about those of us whose membership of the University depends on holding Cambridge degrees by incorporation? Did we all pay the £5 fee stipulated in the Ordinances (p. 154)? I don’t recollect that I did.

Dr J. P. Skittrall (Department of Pathology and Trinity College), read by the Junior Pro-Proctor:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I wish to speak to the second part of this Report, relating to resignation of membership of the University and renunciation of degrees. It seems to me that what the Council and General Board propose is an unnecessarily convoluted approach, the aims of which could far more simply be achieved by a statement, possibly confirmed by Grace, that the University intended to take no action against somebody whose membership of the University had been removed, for any reason, and who continued to describe himself or herself as having been admitted to the degrees to which he or she had indeed been admitted, providing that the person had not explicitly been deprived of those degrees.

The most important issue with the proposal as it stands is that it would have no effect whatsoever on membership of the University, as there has been no recent publication of a list of members of the University, I am not aware of any intention to recommence regular publication of a list of members, and it is the next publication of such a list that is deemed to be the point at which resignation of membership takes effect.

The Statutes and Ordinances in many places treat a degree of the University as a grade of membership – one can argue about whether a degree is a grade of membership, but for many constitutional purposes that is how it functions. Attempting to decouple degrees and membership in statutory form is likely to lead to unexpected complications. One easily foreseeable example is that if a degree ceases to be a grade of membership, then the natural requirement that one has to be alive to receive a degree no longer applies, and the issue of posthumous degrees is opened. (I can anticipate the response disclaiming this intention, but undertake to point back to this prediction when the issue nonetheless arises.)

In any case, the seriousness of the consequences of resignation of membership is a matter for debate that I argue it would be preferable to decouple from that of the issue of non-payment of fees.

I see the question of the consequences of resignation of membership of the University on degrees to be similar to the question of whether civil disobedience in what is perceived to be a just cause should incur prescribed penalties for the acts committed. It is far from clear to me that making resignation of membership a somehow less serious affair is the right way to proceed for the good governance of the University – or (conversely) for the meaning of such an act as a form of protest.

If the Council and General Board still wish to pursue the course of action they have proposed, then might I suggest that it would help for evaluating the utility of their proposals if they were to publish a summary of the number of resignations of membership that have been made since the mechanism was first introduced, and any reasons given for resignation, plus a summary of any circumstances that, in practice, have arisen but were not covered by the existing framework?

All of these new issues could be avoided simply by undertaking instead of the current proposal the pragmatic expedient I have suggested at the beginning of my speech. Indeed, thinking about the pragmatics of enforcement, one might argue that de facto the intended outcomes stated in the second part of the Report could probably be better achieved by doing nothing at all.