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Iowa State AIDS Researcher Admits To Falsifying Findings
theodp writes "'With countless lives depending on their work,' writes Brett Smith, 'it seems unthinkable that AIDS researchers might falsify their work. However, that's just what Iowa State University assistant professor Dong-Pyou Han has admitted to, according to federal documents.' Han resigned from the project in October after admitting to tampering with samples to give the appearance that an experimental vaccine was causing lab animals to build up protections against HIV. According to the NIH, Han apparently spiked rabbit blood with human blood components from people whose bodies had produced antibodies to HIV. 'This positive result was striking, and it caught everybody's attention,' said the NIH. However, researchers at other institutions became suspicious after they were unsuccessful in duplicating the ISU results. The Iowa State AIDS research project had been awarded $19 million in federal grants over the past several years. Han has agreed to be banned from participating in any federally-financed research for three years."
ISU cannot afford to allow such a small punishment for a breach in their scientific intergrity. Oh no, no government funded research projects for three years. How about ever? And a requirement to disclose this information before taking any position. Peoples lives depend on this research. Maybe false hope is better than no hope to the average person, but that doesn't fly in science.
For many researches it takes more than 3-years to get a federal grant (if they don't falsify results that is), how is a 3-year ban from federally-financed research any sort of punishment for such dishonesty?
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sounds like a conspiracy to me. There has to be more to this story than just a professor doug tampering with samples and resigning
...Getting caught cheating in a professional field where people's lives are at state should be a capitol offense.
You got that right, this is the kind of offense regularly done at the Capitol..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol
In contrast, teenagers that break windows with a total worth of $550 get felony jail time.
Dr. Dong-Pyou Han is a Korean.
He cheated.
So was Dr. Woo-suk Hwang, who fake the data on cloning back in 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk
Koreans can never be trusted.
Never !
While it's true that both Dr. Hwang and Dr. Han are Koreans, not all Koreans are cheaters.
Similarly, not all non-Koreans are non-cheaters either.
But I sense something terribly wrong in the set-up at Iowa State U.
You see, Dr. Han's immediate superior is Dr. Michael Cho, and as the supervisor of Dr. Han, Dr. Cho has failed to keep a close eyes on the researches being carried out by his subordinates.
And while Dr. Han has had his wrist slightly slapped (only ban for 3 year). Dr. Cho, the boss, never was reprimanded for his own dereliction of duty.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
But "Han Dong Pyou" is not a Chinese.
Chinese names do not have any spelling that even approaching "pyou".
I am a Chinese, I know.
BTW, I never cheat in my study. I don't have to.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
He basically stole $19M. That's $19M that could have been used for *real* research to help people.
He's a piece of crap.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
It's really cute that you think academic research-based scientists are rich.
Is this overspill from the whole "climate change is just a cover for scientists to get rich off the back of lucrative grants" stuff?
It's not. After this no one will touch him; his career as a researcher is over. For professors, three years of no federal grants is generally enough to kill the entire lab, and a three-year lapse in publishing is enough to kill any career on its own, with the possible exception of the most hard-boiled tenure.
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I don't understand why he's not being charged with criminal fraud.
Because the evidence shows that scientists have no bias, are moral, and simply throw money from grants to the poor street rats when they receive it. /sarcasm
Principal investigators are paid fairly well. Research assistants and technicians might not. A good PI brings in millions of dollars to a state university and that is how they fill those budget voids. Our research overhead is 55%. That is money taken right off the top for the privilege of working in a university owned lab building. All equipment and supplies come out of the rest. Those grants need a good PI name to get funded.
LOL, what is shows is you can't get away with cheating in science in the long run. There is always the underlying reality that will catch up to you sooner or later. The fact that in 20+ years no one has been able to show any substantial fraud in climate research means you aren't likely to find any. The thought that all of the thousands of climate researchers are in on a multi-decade conspiracy to hide the truth is ludicrous. It puts you firmly in the camp of conspiracy theorists.
"Iowa State University assistant professor Dong-Pyou Han" may not have the money for fancy lawyers but "Iowa State AIDS research project" or the "Iowa State University" most probably have some on they payrolls.
Correct, and ISU would much rather see headlines that say "ISU researcher barred from seeking federal grants for three years" than "ISU researcher sentenced to five years in jail for fraud."
I'm not sure why people don't actually go to jail for this, other than the fact that the NIH can't actually bring charges to court, only apply sanctions w.r.t. grant applications; criminal charges would require that the DOJ get involved. For what it's worth, most scientists I know (myself included) think that the NIH is far too lenient with scientists found guilty of willful fraud. I would make it a lifetime ban.
It's not. After this no one will touch him; his career as a researcher is over. For professors, three years of no federal grants is generally enough to kill the entire lab, and a three-year lapse in publishing is enough to kill any career on its own, with the possible exception of the most hard-boiled tenure.
True, but he attempted (?) to defraud the federal government out of several million dollars. If you tried that with Medicaid, you'd go to jail. On the other hand, considering that our jails are already packed full and seem to encourage rather than prevent recidivism, there is a strong case to be made that simply destroying this asswipe's scientific career is a more effective and efficient punishment than locking him up with "blue-collar" criminals at the cost of $20,000-plus per year. It sure does seem unfair to the poor losers who got stuck with mandatory minimum sentences for petty drug crimes, though.
If you have secret information that it's going to as you say "really start to chill out ca 2020" you should publish it so we can all see it. So far geophysical reality is not cooperating with your hypothesis. Climate scientists may be wrong about some things but if they are they're honestly wrong, not deliberately falsifying their work. With the scrutiny climate science has been getting over the past 20+ years if there was some fundamental problem with it we would have found it. Climate scientists may be wrong about some things but if they are they're honestly wrong not deliberately falsifying evidence.
That's another LOL. I presume you're talking about the controversy over the Soon & Baliunas paper published in the journal Climate Research in 2003. That paper has methodological flaws that should have been caught in review and weren't. They used precipitation and drought proxies without assessing their temperature sensitivity and conflating regional temperature change proxies with global changes. Even the publisher of Climate research admitted as much. Five editors resigned from the journal rather than remain associated with such shoddy journalism. Climate scientist were protecting the integrity of the peer review process by calling out a failure in it.
If you have done credible research with a natural conclusion against the current consensus, you get to call yourself a heretic. If you can at least show why there is legitimate doubt about the current consensus you might just qualify as an ultra-conservative or naysayer. Otherwise you're pure psycho-ceramic.