Duke University is in big trouble. A whistleblower exposed a culture of academic corruption. The federal suit
accuses researchers William Foster and Erin Potts-Kants of fabricating data and
falsifying reports as a means to collect grant money from various government
agencies. This investigation began when
Potts-Kants pled guilty to embezzlement.
Then
Potts-Kant’s troubles got worse. Duke officials took a closer look at her work
and didn’t like what they saw. Fifteen of her papers, mostly dealing with
pulmonary biology, have now been retracted, with many notices citing
“unreliable” data. Several others have been modified with either partial
retractions, expressions of concern, or corrections. And last month, a U.S.
district court unsealed a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former colleague of
Potts-Kant. It accuses the researcher, her former
supervisor, and the university of including fraudulent data in applications and
reports involving more than 60 grants worth some $200 million. If successful, the suit—brought under
the federal False Claims Act (FCA)—could force Duke to return to the government
up to three times the amount of any ill-gotten funds, and produce a
multimillion-dollar payout to the whistleblower.
This is just
the tip of the iceberg. Can you imagine
how many government grants have financed fraudulent papers propelling this
man-made global warming nonsense?
However, if you believe public universities will pay for their
malfeasance, think again.
Relatively few of
these cases have targeted research universities (see box, below); many allege
fraud in health care or military programs. But that's changing. The FCA
"is increasingly being used to target alleged fraud in a diverse array of
industries, including research and academia," says attorney Suzanne Jaffe
Bloom of Winston & Strawn LLP in New York City. Although recent court
rulings suggest public universities may have some protection from qui tam suits
because they are government entities, private institutions do not. Eleven
private universities, including Duke, are among the top 25 recipients of
federal funding for academic science over the past decade.
It’s good to be the
government.
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