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Researcher Jailed for Falsifying Research
Caldeso writes "For the first time in U.S. history, a researcher has received jail time for falsifying research data to obtain federal grants. Eric Poehlman pled guilty to defrauding the government to the tune of nearly 3 million dollars by changing and making up research and was sentenced to a year in a federal prison work camp and a lifetime ban on further federal grants."
In this article, it says that a research assistant, Walter DeNino, discovered that Poehlman was fabricating data. It sounds like Poehlman was pretty aggressive in trying to slander DeNino to save his own skin ...
Grant funds are closely watched as to what is charged to them.
Oh? At my local university, professors buy pc hardware for use around the office when their grant is about to run out. I know of one instance where nearly $10,000 was spent on laptops... who the hell needs 10 laptops for research, especially three days before the grant expires?
Now, not to say that all grant money goes to waste (and, this was a $3.2 million grant, so it's not like it was a large percentage), but it could've paid for 1/100,000,000 of the budget for the new stealth bomber or whatever it is. I mean, come on!