As federal lawgivers wrangle over a regulatory regime to prevent a recurrence of the credit-driven shenanigans of recent years, there are indications of potential problems with a fraud detection mechanism they prescribed eight years ago.

One of the key features of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted in 2002 in the wake of that year's class of corporate miscreants, was a requirement that companies provide a way for employees to anonymously report what they believe to be financial fraud. The thinking was that hot lines would encourage tipsters to report fraud, thereby deterring fraud or causing those who commit it to be identified, investigated and punished.

But researchers from Bentley College and the University of New Hampshire are casting doubt on the effectiveness of the whistle-blower provision.

They conclude that subconscious biases influence corporate directors charged with investigating the allegations, causing them to give less credibility to anonymous tips than to reports with names attached to them, and to be less inclined to investigate when the allegations pose a significant threat to their reputation.

"Anonymous allegations appear to be ignored in many cases," said Jacob Rose, an associate professor at UNH's Whittemore School of Business and Economics. "Our findings call into question whether anonymous whistle-blowing actually improves corporate governance."

Dr. Rose and Bentley's James E. Hunton conducted an experiment with 83 people who are on the board of at least one publicly traded company and who serve on at least one audit committee, the board committee responsible for investigating allegations of fraud. The subjects had served on boards for an average of 23 years.

Directors were given a hypothetical allegation serious enough to trigger an investigation: that management of a biotechnology company was using questionable accounting to inflate its quarterly earnings. The test subjects were asked how they would respond to the report.

The allegation was either made anonymously or by someone who provided a name, and it either posed a low or high threat to the reputation of the directors. Directors also were given a pot of money to spend on investigating the charges.

Much of Dr. Hunton's research has centered on how subconscious biases influence individuals' judgments and decisions. He says that while his initial presumption is that executives and directors are honest, ethical people, the experiment with directors showed how those biases can work. Directors tend to be more inclined to make decisions that benefit or protect themselves and to justify those decisions by discounting the credibility of anonymous whistle-blowers.

He and Dr. Rose found the same thing after conducting the experiment with the 83 directors. Their subjects gave less credibility to anonymous allegations than to ones where the whistle-blower identified himself or herself. The perceived lack of credibility of allegations made by an anonymous whistle-blower "gives them a justification for not investigating it," Dr. Rose said.

The directors also were less likely to allocate money to investigate reports that posed a high threat to their reputation, a threat that would jeopardize their ability to be a director now and in the future.

When an anonymous allegation posed a high threat to their reputation, only 27 percent of the directors said they would spend the whole pot of money investigating the threat vs. the 96 percent who said they would spend everything investigating nonanonymous charges that posed a low threat to their reputation, Dr. Rose said.

"We expect that in practice, these effects would be stronger than what we found in controlled lab conditions," he added.

They also believe that the effects would have been more pronounced if they had asked directors with less experience.

"Younger directors are building a reputation and have a longer career horizon. They would be much more protective of their reputations," Dr. Hunton said.

He said he got a cool reception when he presented the findings to a group of corporate directors.

"One red-faced director was greatly insulted that our findings suggest that directors are unethical," Dr. Hunton said. "Once I explained the subconscious nature of these types of insidious biases, the directors were much more receptive."

The researchers believe that the answer is having whistle-blower allegations invested by someone who is not susceptible to these subtle biases, which they say can cause good people to make bad decisions. They suggest a government or quasi-government agency or a law firm that specializes in verifying the truthfulness of whistle-blower reports.

Dr. Rose is conducting a new study that could identify parties who could be more independent than directors in investigating such allegations, something his co-researcher believes is necessary.

"I am not convinced that any entity within the corporation, including directors, can be totally unbiased in all circumstances," Dr. Hunton said. "I am not trying to impugn the character of corporate managers or directors, but these self-interest biases are insidious, and they operate at a deep subconscious level."

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