"I don't think I would recommend to someone that they maintain a notebook to withstand scrutiny by the Secret Service or forensics experts," Meister says.
"Any lab has to be run on the basis of trust," says Vleck Professor of Pure and Applied Physics Paul C. Martin '52, a member of the faculty committee on professional conduct.
But trust and hierarchy do not satisfy some. Four professors interviewed by The Crimson said they believed that every professor should have personally supervise and check every experiment. Each, however, admitted that they themselves could not always live up to that standard.
"A professor sponsoring research is obligated to have hands-on contact with the data," says one biology professor who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But this contact is not common."
In the end, professors say, the possibility of research fraud is just another reality of scientific research, much like test tubes, gloves or laboratory notebooks. Researchers bent on deceiving their boss usually can.
Says another Harvard biology professor: "A real professional who wants to cheat will pull wool over anybody's eyes.