Why do lawyers control their own misconduct issues?

Please explain and simplify this text to me?

• This text is too hard for me to understand: Some university advocates have blasted a proposed federal survey about the extent of outright fraud and other forms of questionable conduct in biomedical research. The critics say the survey's questions are too broad and improperly cover types of research misconduct that are not regulated by the government. Officials at the federal Office of Research Integrity, which would sponsor the survey, say that its mandate was modified in 1999 to focus on education and research about a range of issues in research ethics. The survey would help the office measure the pervasiveness of misconduct and the effectiveness of efforts by the federal government and research institutions to prevent it, says Chris B. Pascal, the office's director. The Gallup polling organization would distribute the survey to more than 3,000 scientists nationwide. LACK OF RELIABLE DATA Many experts -- most recently, a panel of the Institute of Medicine -- have said that efforts to control and deter research misconduct have been hampered by a lack of reliable, comprehensive data about it. The Department of Health and Human Services published a notice in the October 7 Federal Register seeking public comment, through December 6, about the proposed survey. That request has drawn at least one critical response, whose authors made it public last week. The survey questions are too broad and ambiguous and "will generate confusion, but not accurate, interpretable, or useful data," Jordan J. Cohen, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and Steven L. Teitelbaum, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, wrote in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Cohen and Dr. Teitelbaum note that the survey's questions go beyond the federal government's definition of scientific misconduct, which is limited to plagiarism and fabricating or falsifying data, and include queries about "procedural sloppiness." For example, one question asks respondents if they know of colleagues who cited research articles that they had not read. Other questions ask about researchers who gave colleagues access to research materials and data, and about their perceptions of universities' promotion practices. Topics like those "are not -- and should not be -- subject to federal oversight," Dr. Cohen and Dr. Teitelbaum wrote. The survey represents a new direction for the research-integrity office, which a decade ago made headlines with several high-profile investigations. The office's reputation was tarnished after allegations in some cases were overturned on appeal. Please clarify it for me because I'm supposed to answer some questions on it, but I can't because I have trouble understanding it.

• Answer:

  Some people are concerned about ethical research practices. (sounds as if its university press secretaries and lawyers worried about bad press or lawsuits) They have created a document that has has the goal of determining if researchers are acting ethically. (they are basically saying are you being ethical and how ethical are you) Unfortunately they have not first determined and distributed a document declaring the benchmarks of ethical behavior. Without that baseline all results will be useless as each institution or researcher will be using their own definition of ethical behavior or worse the publishing body will make the determination. In short if the reports publishers are environmentalist they may consider any research into deep earth sonar that could help discover oil or gas reserves as unethical which would mean funds and grants may be denied not on the underlying science but political concerns. Perhaps it is a reply to the Climate gate debacle which to me was simply a bunch of scientist happy to keep funds flowing by putting out only the data that showed man was the only thing affecting climate change. Failing to put their data in historical context (medieval warming period) and in relationship other factors such as solar activity. Not quite sure how you ask anyone to give results that may end their grants and funding but it is not just what we should expect from scientist. The real problem with the survey sounds to be the context (Factors) have not been defined which makes the final results useless. God bless hope you find a logical solution to the illogical survey.