Chuck Jackson points us to this news item:
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc. (Dana-Farber) has agreed to pay $15,000,000 to resolve allegations that, between 2014 and 2024, it violated the False Claims Act by making materially false statements and certifications related to National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants….
As part of the settlement, Dana-Farber admitted that its researchers used funds from six NIH grants to conduct research that resulted in 14 publications in scientific journals containing misrepresented and/or duplicated images and data. The publications reused images to represent different experimental conditions; duplicated images to represent different testing conditions, mice, and/or timepoints; or rotated, magnified, or stretched images. Further, Dana-Farber admitted that a supervising researcher failed to exercise sufficient oversight over these researchers, and that Dana-Farber spent funds from those six NIH grants that were unallowable.
As part of the settlement, Dana-Farber also admitted that another researcher received four NIH grants after submitting grant applications that discussed a journal article authored by the researcher but did not disclose that certain images and data in that article were misrepresented and/or duplicated. The United States contends that Dana-Farber caused the submission of false claims to NIH by falsely certifying compliance with grant terms and conditions, spending grant funds on unallowable expenses, and obtaining grants through false and misleading statements. . . .
Good to see this sort of thing.
Meanwhile, I don’t recall hearing that Columbia University had to pay back the money on this guy’s grants. And I don’t know if any of this guy’s research was federally funded. Although, now that the government is pardoning fraudsters all the time and cutting down on tax enforcement, I suppose that scientific fraud is really the least of it.
It’s happened before. This is just the first one I remember off the top of my head: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/duke-university-agrees-pay-us-1125-million-settle-false-claims-act-allegations-related
In the pardon link, it’s a person who was not convicted of fraud, but of a convoluted violation of BSA, one for which nobody else has ever been sentenced to prison for violating.
Avi:
It says he was sentenced to prison after “pleading guilty to violating U.S. money-laundering laws.” And his company pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay a fine “after a US investigation found it helped users bypass sanctions.” Both these things seem to me like fraud, but if you want to change that to “money laundering,” go for it.
We’d all like to think there’s an ethical imperative that guides (most of) us, but if you want to be amoral about it, there’s always the Chicago “Economics of Crime”: the expected value of not commiting a crime should exceed the expected value of committing it. So maybe the penalty should be tailored to the financial return to the guilty party and the likelihood of uncovering their scams.
Not espousing, but it’s one perspective.
After reading your comment, I thought about the following by Fenning (Nature, 427, p. 393):
“For example, I asked a colleague who was familiar with the details of a recent case of scientific fraud why — given
the risks — he thought the perpetrators had done it. He drolly observed that the real question is not why a few scientists commit fraud, but why more don’t do it. He went on to say that since the maximum penalty for getting caught (dismissal) was no worse than the routine penalty for not producing enough high-profile papers (no job), most junior scientists, at least, have nothing to lose by committing fraud”.
And the following might also be relevant. From Sovacool (2005) “Using Criminalization and Due Process to Reduce Scientific Misconduct”:
“Unsettling as it may sound, two independent legal studies appearing in the Thomas Cooley Law Review and Michigan Journal of Law Reform have argued that criminal prosecution can create a prophylactic effect on preventing fraud and condemning the harsher forms of scientific misconduct (Goldberg 2003; Kuzma 1992). In addition, because such a statute would be expanded to penalize those who know of misconduct within their institution, harshening criminal statutes could motivate more colleagues to report violations. And because stronger fines and penalties would threaten institutions with significant financial losses, they could motivate administrators to reform their research environments now rather than risking punitive damages later. Criminalizing misconduct could also motivate scientists to be more careful in their research.”
Side note:
Have we heard all those “incentives” and “change the system” folks talk about these kinds of measures, and if not why?
Or is “aligning what’s good for scientists with what’s good for science” and “changing the incentives” only about proposing and promoting large scale projects in which a small group of people might benefit disproportionately from all this cooperation and collaboration and where a small group of people might have way too much influence?
I thought a significant part of the DOJ press release was the paragraph that described how Dana-Farber cooperated.
Dana-Farber cooperated with the government in this matter and received credit under the Department’s guidelines for taking disclosure, cooperation, and remediation into account in False Claims Act cases. Among other actions, Dana-Farber summarized voluminous materials relevant to the government’s investigation, voluntarily disclosed additional allegations of research misconduct relevant to the government’s investigation, voluntarily produced materials without a subpoena, sought to resolve this matter expeditiously, accepted responsibility for its conduct, and implemented remedial measures.
Emphasis Added
Unlike some organizations that either deny problems or just ignore them, Dana-Farber seems to have actively tried to remedy them.