By: Jeannie Baumann
Paul Thaler, chair of the firm’s Scientific Misconduct Group, was quoted in the Bloomberg Law article, “Duke’s Fraud Trouble Is a Wake-up Call for Research Compliance.”
Duke University’s whopping $112.5 million settlement for faking research data is a warning shot to others to ensure their data stand up to scrutiny.
“This case should send a signal to researchers and the institutions in which they work that they better get their federal grants in order,” said F. Lisa Murtha, who has specialized in research compliance for more than three decades and is a senior managing director for the consulting firm Ankura.
The settlement, announced March 25, is a sign that the HHS and Justice Departments are scrutinizing the integrity of federal grants more intensely. In the Duke case, a whistleblower claimed researchers and the university deliberately submitted false data about their research to the National Institutes of Health, which were linked to about $200 million in federal grant money. While the Justice Department settles billions of dollars in health-care related fraud and false claims cases a year, research fraud cases remain a rarity.