Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Federal Prosecutors have launched a gigantic fraud case against Duke University, North Carolina, accusing Duke University of embezzling $200 million in federal research grants, by presenting doctored data with their grant applications.
Whistleblower sues Duke, claims doctored data helped win $200 million in grants
On a Friday in March 2013, a researcher working in the lab of a prominent pulmonary scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, was arrested on charges of embezzlement. The researcher, biologist Erin Potts-Kant, later pled guilty to siphoning more than $25,000 from the Duke University Health System, buying merchandise from Amazon, Walmart, and Target—even faking receipts to legitimize her purchases. A state judge ultimately levied a fine, and sentenced her to probation and community service.
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 Fifteen of her papers, mostly dealing with pulmonary biology, have now been retracted, with many notices citing “unreliable” data.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.
The Duke case “should scare all [academic] institutions around the country,” says attorney Joel Androphy of Berg & Androphy in Houston, Texas, who specializes in false claims litigation. It appears to be one of the largest FCA suits ever to focus on research misconduct in academia, he says, and, if successful, could “open the floodgates” to other whistleblowing cases.
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The academic whistleblower, who presumably took a serious personal risk to expose this alleged fraudulent misuse of federal funds, stands to receive a multi-million dollar bounty if the embezzlement case is proven.
I somehow doubt this will be the last case of academic embezzlement which will be heard by the courts.
“Federal Prosecutors have launched a gigantic fraud case against Duke University”
Which Federal prosecutors? This seems to be a private suit, brought by someone who hopes to claim a bounty.
“And last month, a U.S. district court unsealed a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former colleague of Potts-Kant.”
Why was the whistleblower lawsuit sealed in the first place? The original article doesn’t say, but it has me curious. Was this an attempt to cover up the misconduct or just a routine legal procedure in whistleblower cases? In any case, doesn’t the following description of her misconduct sound familiar?
I wonder why scientists today think it is okay to alter the data to match the hypothesis? I can’t imagine where a scientist would get such an idea.
There are bad apples in every barrel, but we should not judge the barrels for that. The problem is that science has a built in mechanism to autocorrect with time, but no mechanism for correcting scientists misbehavior and is ridled with corporativism.
Nice try, Javier, but no cigar.
Indeed if you have enough bad apples, the rest of the apples in the barrel are legitimately suspect. Example: the estimated 3-6% of child abusing priests casts a pall over all priests.
The problem compounds when “innocent” members of the group (scientists, priests, etc) don’t quickly & forcefully speak out to enforce the rules. This is a pretty common problem when groups become tribes which then become “brands”. There frequently is more pressure to silence the whistle blower than to discipline the wrong-doer.
In economics this principle is known as Gresham’s law: “bad money drives out good”
Nope. There are guilty people and inocent people and casting general doubts is unfair, unjust, and serves no general interest, but advances some people’s agenda.
Gresham law refers to the quality of money, and has nothing to do with this issue.
“Nope. There are guilty people and inocent [sic] people and casting general doubts is unfair, unjust, and serves no general interest…”
Depends. If the guilty are members of a class that is generally regarded as more “moral” or “incorruptible” than us mere mortals, it is in our “general interest” to remind us that they’re only human after all, and should be subject to the same skepticism as anyone else. Examples would include priests (and “holy” men/women in general), police, and scientists; scientists because public policy (which affects us all) may be based on their work.
When there are visible bad apples in a barrel, Now called harvest bins 4′ X 4′ X 30″, the entire bin gets crushed for apple juice.
It isn’t worth the time nor effort to sort out the bad ones.
Metaphorically, the same will happen to those corrupted research groups. Everyone within the research group will be tainted, likely for their entire careers.
The few respectable researchers that might be in a corrupted group will be viewed with suspicion, for never alerting management or authorities to questionable doings.
Alerting superiors or authorities is only sufficient when the questionable actions are not documented in detail in writing with copies.
Science, without decisive action by the honest, has zero ability to autocorrect. If a researcher is not an open part of the solution, then they are part of the problem.
Right now, climate science is rapidly retreating to ‘Piltdown man’ status.
“questionable actions are not documented in detail in writing with copies”
Spurious ‘not’ from confused fingers got into the original.
This is an interesting case and an interesting post on the case. Thanks for posting it.
I am of the opinion that almost all of “climate science” has been a colossal fraud and not just scientific error. If I am right, and time will tell, then every grant, law, regulation, meeting, salary, and so on are all money stolen from the taxpayers.
How much? I wager the bill would be in excess of a Trillion dollars. Perhaps 100 Trillion.
The perpetrator in this case should use the Hillary Clinton defense and claim she did not know that fraud was against the law.
Hmm! Wonder if this could be applied to doctored/biased climate models?
With billions in grants, there could be a >> multimillion-dollar payout if sustained!
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.
That’s the money quote.
I actually think this one is better… “Whistleblowers filed a record 754 FCA cases in 2013, and last year alone won nearly $600 million. The U.S. government, meanwhile, has recouped more than $3.5 billion annually from FCA cases in recent years.”
That’s gotta be the quietest $3.5 billion dollars changing hands ever.
Wish I had taken notes, but a couple of decades ago I heard comments along the line of “…may not be correct, but…. Ever hear of “pencil engineering?” Computer erasure easier now, I guess. I fear the more subtle corruption more. Have worked with academia, legal profession, industry, including oil, and government. All have great people, but on average would trust the oil industry as the best of the bunch, but I am a little out of date.
No contest. Academia used to be the straightest; not any more. On average, industry is the best of the lot, until you get to outfits contracting with the Government. But I have run into occasional government departments that were very straight-up service-oriented; they were great to deal with, but that was a long time ago.
This may be the wrong place to ask this, but as long as we are talking about Duke University, whatever happened to Robert G. Brown? He doesn’t seem to have posted or commented here for months and months. I really miss his input.
Only if they’re engaging in fraud.
Here is an activist professor who has modified his “science” for the sake of a cause: https://news.wsu.edu/2016/08/31/wsu-issues-statement-clarifying-comments-profanity-peak-wolf-pack/
I’m not going to say much more about it other than advocacy science is wrecking public confidence that the universities in this country are credible, or for that matter even useful in public debate. Once caught in a lie, forever suspect. This behavior taints the whole lot.
Activists judge themselves by their intentions, instead of their actions.
Now that the ” Consensus Scientists ” have been used to sell a fraud the next real money will made blowing whistles . Bills do have to be paid after all .
Let’s see,… climate modeller’s , IPCC insiders , and grant dependant renewable companies for a start could make someone a handsome living . Next,… AG’s that violate their terms of employment by acting as lobbyist’s and politicians who know it’s a scam but continue to betray the public trust .
There will be serious coin available but get it while it lasts . The rats have started running for cover .
Doctored data and a manic scramble to receive grant money seem to have become normal and predominant activities in Science these days. Whatever happened to honest research? Oh, I forgot….
Well, here’s hoping someone might think that keeping the formal investigation into Jagadish Shukla going would be a good idea. Perhaps one of his millennial sycophant grad students might turn on him for a good payout.
Obama and the CDC will punish the whistle blower. That is his way. This money was undoubtedly directed to the recipient that supplied the politics desired by the administration.
Thomas alleges, Potts-Kant had run the experiments but altered the data, tweaking them to match the hypothesis or boost their statistical significance.”
Post normal science.
We need more whistleblowers, a lot more whistleblowers.
Won’t matter. Just about every paleo temp reconstruction has been shown to be statistically and physically (trees aren’t thermometers) bogus. Yet no one is being prosecuted. And don’t forget climategate. The whistles have been blown repeatedly. Nothing changed.
Really? A whistleblower is an INSIDER with direct evidence of the fraud. Someone who can testify who/how/where/when/why the fraudsters carried out their crimes.
The closest that we’ve seen to a whistleblower in fake climate “science” is the person who released the ClimateGate emails.
But even that action is not the whistleblowing required by the FCA–we need someone who reveals the truth, and then cooperates through the investigation, trial, and sentencing.
For sublime irony check out ‘Duketoday’ News item headed ‘The Balancing Act of Holding Businesses Accountable’ depicting a Monopoly Chance card- Go directly to jail Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200
Missed a few pesky zeros again by the looks- https://www.duke.edu/
We couldn’t possibly let that one go without a proper citation for posterity now could we Duke?
https://web.archive.org/web/20160903230117/https://www.duke.edu/
Open the flood gates please !
Science for profit has been happening for decades and has been mostly ignored.
Article in the Penn State student newspaper, January 2010 (6 years ago):
http://onwardstate.com/2010/01/14/former-cia-agent-investigates-climategate/
Former CIA Agent Investigates “Climategate”
“…As the Collegian reported this week, Mr. Clizbe sent letters to 27 Penn State faculty members in hopes of locating a snitch whistleblower. He possesses an extensive background in secure communications and has even recruited a lawyer who has experience working with the False Claims Act.
“Faculty members who come forward with information about the Climategate controversy will be protected–and apparently well paid.
“We contacted Mr. Clizbe to understand his motives for launching this personal investigation. He explained:
“As a concerned American citizen, I’ve been following the Man-caused Global Warming discussion for many years. The recent escalation of the stakes, led by Mann, Al Gore, and the UN’s IPCC, with their demands that the US reduce our use of coal and oil, and pay ransoms to poor countries, raised my level of concern for the US and for the world.”
“Apparently, Mr. Clizbe is not entirely sold on the issue of anthropogenic global warming and wants the full, unadulterated story, sans false information and misleading evidence. To find the truth about Mann’s supposedly fraudulent activity, he requests that Mann’s colleagues step forward with any relevant knowledge surrounding the issue.”
For the last 6 years, I’ve advocated harnessing the power of the FCA against the fraudsters in the Climate “research” community.
The Climate fakes will NOT be vanquished by realists arguing more logically, nor by calling them names, nor by publishing “climate research,” nor by witty ripostes amongst ourselves.
The scam will crumble, as nearly all massive frauds (see Bernie Madoff) do, by an insider blowing the whistle.
Spread the word. Spread it far and wide. Let every staffer in every university “climate research” office know: FCA is powerful. The truth will out. Share your knowledge about research fraud. Now.
No one will disagree that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and dwarfs the amount of co2. I didn’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Sometimes things happen when there is a need. The need is safe reliable drinking water. There are company/ies making small units that take water vapor out of the air, producing from 40 to 100 gallons daily. Each small unit costs about $10,000. In high humid areas, we can significantly reduce the amount of this greenhouse gas. In semi arid areas it’d be a life safer and reduce the amount of ground water extraction.
Whatever has been spent on boondoggle ideas, this is one that is currently working. Extracting co2 from the atmosphere is not possible in any economic way. The amount is just too small. We can reduce water vapor. Instead of spending enormous sums on less that reliable technology, wrecking the economy, this kills 2 birds with one stone.
As an alternative to CAGW ideas.
“Extracting co2 from the atmosphere is not possible in any economic way.”
.
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Funny you should say that, because the grass in my lawn is extracting it economically. My trees do it too.
Commercially… I didn’t put everything in the last post. It was assuming that everything the CAGW says is true. Nowhere, not anyone has ever brought up the idea of extracting the other greenhouse gas.
The green group wants to wreck the economy and send us back to the dark ages. We don’t need to do that. Besides drastically reducing co2 emmisions and subsisting very costly and unpredictable solar and wind, carbon capture is another of their looney ideas, which in no way reduces atmospheric co2 to any degree. It does present hazards which have been discussed here.
I have at length posted about the ever growing size of the sinks. Which, if the green groups are to be believed couldn’t or shouldn’t be happening.
What you may not know is how research is slanted to finding a problem with increased co2 in plants. When none are found, you don’t hear about it. Neither are they looking for the benefits. It is only by the obvious increased observational results from the planet as a whole has this benefit even been acknowledged.
CAGW is bad science. And the political activism from it is about the lowest form of human endeavors. The only ideas that they come up with are ones that are detrimental to human existence.
All the works from other people that was based on the corrupted data will also have to be redacted and modified. This will waste the time of these other people.. The earlier the dodgy “science” was that has been assumed to be true, the more unreliable the later research becomes. In the case of cAGW, the suspect assumptions came in quite early in the piece, making all the subsequent “work” worthless trash. There will be a lot of egg on faces when it turns out that the whole lot was rubbish from quite a while back and some (taxpayer funded) scientific bodies manipulated the data to fit in with the hypothesis.
What will be the penalties?!? Heads should roll over the scam when it is eventually uncovered.
Global warming is caused by government funding.
But wait all these papers could not be false because they were pal reviewed oh sorry peer reviewed.
When you submit a request for funding of your pet project you are acutely aware of many other pet projects similarly needing funds — and all from a presumably limited pot. Naturally, you will represent your project in the best possible light so as to maximise your chances of obtaining a meal ticket for the next few months or years. But, you are aware that your competitors are similarly motivated, so the temptation to “sex up” your submission (as did Tony Blair) is very powerful. After all, your work is very important and, if YOU don’t tell a little fib or two, your competitors will. Seriously, are you going to let those bastards steal money that is rightfully yours?
The funding system, as it stands, encourages fraud and punishes objective honesty. The surprise should be that so few such cases are exposed. Possibly, this was just a little too egregious to sweep under the rug. What would have happened in the absence of a whistle-blower? … Anything?
Punishment is only a small part of the remedy. The temptation (necessity?) to commit fraud must be appreciably reduced. Positions need to be reasonably well-paid and tenured. There should be limited pressure to publish. etc etc.
I won’t go into further detail, but it must be admitted that my proposals will give encouragement to time-serving parasites. The question is: is systematised fraud preferable to a few parasites?
Well I suspect that there was a time when academic institutions were a part of the education system.
People went there to learn something so they could function in a complex society and world, and earn a living.
Presumably people chose their source of higher education based on the teaching reputation of the staff; presumably the professors.
I don’t think most people go to a university to be “educated” by some grad student working on a PhD. specially not with today’s astronomical fees.
I’m quite sure that at no time during my total of six years in a university environment, not all of it formally as a student, did I ever read ANY peer reviewed paper of any kind, authored by anybody on the teaching staff of the school, nor those of anyone actually doing research at that institution.
So if they were under a publish or perish directive, it was certainly not apparent from a student point of view; well at least this one’s.
I did receive extensive tuition from three full professors (in the Physics department) at least one of those was solely due to the particular Physics major courses I took, and one was my mentor on a post grad thesis project.
Lab periods were monitored by grad students, but the experimental part of it was dictated by a printed manual to be followed by the student him(er)self. In one instance I pretty much rewrote the lab manual myself for that particular experiment. (Using a Fabry-Perot interferometer, to measure accurately some spectral lines from a neon discharge tube.)
I don’t have a good idea just how US Universities work. Seems like a lot of them are built on the reputation of either their football team or their basketball team.
Duke, I believe is known for its basketball. I have less than zero interest in basketball at any level.
At least in industry, it seems that most research is dictated by making money from the results, and usually in a free market competitive field.
G