Pair was allegedly pocketing the money given by NASA for their startup instead of paying graduate students to do the work
From AP and web reports:
Professor, Wife Sentenced After Defrauding NASA
The duo told NASA that their startup company would develop a cutting-edge sensor used to track climate change. Instead, prosecutors alleged, they used the company to funnel money to themselves.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A university professor in Pennsylvania has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison on a conviction of defrauding NASA by letting graduate students and researchers do all the work on a $700,000 project.
U.S. District Court Judge Harvey Bartle III also ordered Yujie Ding on Wednesday to pay a fine of $3,000 and restitution of $72,000. His wife, Yuliya Zotova, was sentenced to three months in prison.
Authorities said the Lehigh University engineering professor and his wife told NASA that their startup company ArkLight would develop a cutting-edge sensor used to track climate change. Instead, prosecutors alleged, they used the company “as a front to funnel federal grant money to themselves for research performed by students and others.”
Jurors convicting the couple of six of 10 fraud counts.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a827b865066d491b8095605e6f5ee0ea/professor-wife-sentenced-convictions-defrauding-nasa
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, from August 2009 through July 2010, the pair submitted proposals to NASA seeking research funding by claiming that their business, ArkLight, was doing research and subcontracting work to Lehigh University where Ding was a professor.
Instead, an investigation found that the pair used ArkLight “as a front to funnel federal grant money to themselves for research performed by students and others working under Ding’s supervision at his university lab.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the defendants sent invoices to NASA for research that, a jury found, ArkLight had not participated in.
http://www.phillyvoice.com/lehigh-university-professor-wife-sentenced-scheme-defraud-nasa/
Here is the Federal Indictment: federal_indictment_ding_zotova (PDF)
h/t to WUWT reader “average joe”
It looked to me like they were paid to get research done and they got it done, and the FedGov is screaming fraud over exactly how matters were organized.
I think the pair are patsies, strung up to look like the Justice system is doing its duty and thereby allowing the real fraudsters, such as Mann and many others, get away with it.
Which part of research funding did you idiots not understand? I read this site because among the few who make an attempt to publish science you at least have, in the past. made an attempt.
If any of you morons think grants are applied for by undergraduates and consumed directly by PIs you have NO CLUE AT ALL about how science works.
You should be ashamed.
“grants .. are consumed directly by PIs” consumed?
‘you have no clue at all about how science works” wtf? if you are backing this person say so
“you should be ashamed” sounds kind of religious
Yes, consumed. PIs (Principal Investigators) typically direct the the funds they are granted. No one else has that authority. It’s completely absurd to think anyone else would.
I won’t defend the idea that NASA should have ever funded a climate research project like the one described, but seriously? If they funded it at all it would be under the direction of the PI. This is a stupid article. Sorry. Can’t fix it. Dumb as a box of rocks.
BTW, “you should be ashamed” is ethical, not “religious”.
“What is right Phaedrus, and what is wrong? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
– Plato
Should be : What is right Phaedrus, and what is not right? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
That’s a quote, actually the forward and primary message from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. If you haven’t read it yet, read it five times and get back to me?
Honestly, in a truly heartfelt sense, I hope you will take the time to read Robert’s book. You won’t be disappointed.
Bartleby, are you on something? Or should you be? Your comment makes no sense.
Charlie: yes; I’m on something. Its called “reality” or “the way shit works”.
PIs write grant applications. When they’re funded they use the money to pay grads and post-grads. That’s how science gets done in the good ‘ol USA. Sorry if I burst a bubble?
Uh, Bartleby, they paid themselves. Others paid grad students. Fraud?
Yes, he’s on the defensive. “Methinks he doth protest too much.”
Perhaps the author meant to write the opinion differently? It reads:
“Instead, an investigation found that the pair used ArkLight “as a front to funnel federal grant money to themselves for research performed by students and others working under Ding’s supervision at his university lab.””
Now then; I read this as:
– Ding & wife applied for a federal grant to perform research.
– They had a lab at a university and a company named ArkLight.
– They used the money to fund research performed by themselves,
students (and others) working under Ding’s supervision at his university
lab.
Unless the author of that paragraph meant something completely different, that’s exactly how all research funding in the US (an most of the RoW) is performed. It’s indistinguishable from common practice.
On various papers it seems to me that students A, B, C and D were doing the work under the supervision of Professor X. So this results in four papers dealing with different aspects of the study, all slightly different so as not to be accused of publishing duplicates, and the authors are various quoted as X, A, B, C, D; X, B, C, D, A; X, C, D, A, B and X, D, A, B, C. This gives four accepted papers for each of the students which they can add to their CVs, while X takes credit for the lot. He has to take first place, because if he was not listed first nobody would ever read the papers. Fraud? Possibly. Depends on the particular contract if the research is being done on a contract basis. If it is a grant, then unless someone has specified the details of the grant so as to prevent this process (and who in the scientific community would ever do that?), – as the saying goes – all is fair in love and scientific publishing.
Usually the grad students and post docs name comes first and the PI last in the author list.
Indeed Bartleby is right, that is how grant applications work, I’ve written many of them myself.
Usually an agency puts out a call for proposals on a particular topic.
If you think you can make a contribution you prepare a proposal outlining your plans with appropriate references etc. Then you prepare a budget, usually with the help of your department administrators, detailing consumable costs, salaries (% to be paid, to whom, when etc.), as a faculty member you can usually put some portion of your salary only for the summer months when you are not teaching. This proposal usually goes to your department chair for approval, then to the Dean of the School (say Engineering) then finally to the University Research Grants and Contracts for final approval. All those entities sign the proposal and it’s transmitted to the agency. Assuming you get the grant the money has to be spent according to the proposal, significant changes have to be proposed to the grant awarding body for approval.
What happened in this case is not uncommon, someone thinks he can make money out of his research grants (you really can’t in the procedure I outlined above). What they do is set up a private company usually with their wife as the owner, apply for grants outside the University through that company and skim money off the top. This is usually country to the University’s Conflict of Interest regulations and when discovered is grounds for dismissal, I have personal knowledge of one case and the very distinguished professor’s career went down the tubes! I gave evidence about 15 years ago in an enquiry by NASA into an SBIR grant case (like the one cited here except the company owner wasn’t faculty). It was very similar, his proposal said that he would hire certain staff to do the work and pay them a certain amount, instead he paid himself and didn’t do the work. He just used the work that we were contracted to do (and did) and made up his contribution, a whistleblower reported him! The sentence was 12 months home confinement, 5 years probation and repayment of $1.4million to the government.
Murry Salby was found guilty of a similar misconduct while at the University of Colorado in connection with NSF grants by the NSF Office of Inspector General.
“usually country to the University’s Conflict of Interest regulations”
Should be contrary of course!
I’m flumaxed. I have no idea at all why you picked up this blatant trash. It disgusts me. There are no words for it. Shame on you.
“There are no words for it.”
You seem to have found a few words 😉
I did my best 🙂
He was at Lehigh not Penn State but maybe he will do his time in State Pen.
(y)
$700,000 is a small sum. But, with 100,000 funded NSF bogus projects, the total cums to $1 x 10^10 or $10 Billion Dollars.
If Obama gets a 10% finders fee, he gets $1 Billion Dollars to take to Kenya where he will marry Malia and Sasha.
Poor Michelle, Michael before the “conversion” chemical therapy and surgery, will be left homeless in Chicago.
Ha ha
Where there’s lots of money, there’ll be thieves.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/im-looking-for-a-snitch-who-wants-to-get-rich/
Pointman
How does that work, a “detector for climate change”. Is it something like: a guy walks through a field with a V-shaped piece of would and “feels” the Earth’s vibrations?
“wood” of course, bl..dy spellcheckers
In my opinion stealing and squandering the money was more honest than what most recipients of ‘climate’ funds do. At least these two were not producing insane propaganda and feeding it to schoolchildren.
They gonna track that climate change with a sensor, eh?
Old Prof AA
The reason they thought they could get away with it (and dammit to a large extent they did) is because its a bullshit field and anything you turn out is just as useful (spelled useless) as any other that’s coming down the turnpike. As a retired research professor I should be furious, but I got over furious twenty years ago. The academic world in nearly all disciplines is now being occupied by people with no real sense of history , no sense of the philosophical weaknesses of their work (assuming some of them could spell a word like that) and who find no dignity in the search for truth. Any piece of merde is just as good as any other.
With such mentors we can only hope against hope that a newer generation will be more filled with a commitment to the truth and to the dignity of work, that is well done, however modest.
It is unlikely that I shall see it, but you may. If so encourage it with all your might. We are on the cusp of losing our civilization. No this is not simply the carping of an old man. Almost anyone who has any insight and It’s going tomb a wisdom at present sees the same thing.
It’s going to be an uphill fight brothers and sisters, but the fight for Truth is always a good thing, though in the final analysis there may be no victory. Surely it is better to fight the barbarians and ignoramuses than to meekly capitulate.
What’s a “climate change sensor” anyway? A weather vane? A thermometer? A barometer perhaps? That would be like asking for grant money to invent a “sensor” to detect the phases of the Moon (ie., a telescope). Nice try though.