
Duke University research fraud settlement: $112M payment to U.S. government - danso
https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2019/03/duke-university-settlement-research-fraud-president-price-announces-research-fraud-settlement-with-substantial-payment-to-u-s-government
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Jerry2
Retraction Watch has an interesting list of papers from Erin Potts-Kant, the
Duke researcher that falsified data, that have been retracted so far [0].
There's still some other papers that haven't been retracted yet so her count
of retracted papers will go up over time (it's at 8 full and 1 partial
retraction).

According to The Retraction Watch Leaderboard [1], researcher with most
retractions so far is Yoshitaka Fujii with 183 total retractions.

[0] [https://retractionwatch.com/?s=erin+potts-
kant](https://retractionwatch.com/?s=erin+potts-kant)

[1] [https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-
leaderboard...](https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/)

~~~
yread
That's terrible people keep citing retracted papers, there is one with 977
citations after retraction

[https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-
leaderboard...](https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-
leaderboard/top-10-most-highly-cited-retracted-papers/)

Someone should make plugins for endnote and mendeley so that people can easily
check it. Any hacker here wants to help science?

~~~
foobarbecue
Hunh, that's a great idea! I might do it for zotero if I can find the time.

Edit: ugh, people have talked about this but reactionwatch has no api. I'm
guessing their motivations are misaligned.
[https://twitter.com/bmwiernik/status/1044278851541635072?s=2...](https://twitter.com/bmwiernik/status/1044278851541635072?s=20)

~~~
acct1771
Unless they sell access to it reasonably.

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sahin-boydas
If duke can do this level of fraud, more universities will follow. Lets see
which university will be next.

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ddavis
Labeling one person (or even one department) as "Duke" is very disingenuous.
It was one researcher who committed fraud. The negligent researchers, as
mentioned in the article, are guilty of wrongdoing, but not fraud.

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HillRat
Specifically, a lab tech, not a professor or researcher, who was embezzling
from the university while falsifying lab data. So the school’s guilty of not
aggressively dealing with the faked data and the research it buttressed —
definite wrongdoing! — but it wasn’t engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to use
faked data to apply for federal grants. The penalty seems excessive,
especially given that federal fines for schools engaged in covering up rape
and sexual misconduct (Cleary violations) have never exceeded $2.5mm (and
generally are in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars range).

~~~
kevinventullo
I'm confused, the article does describe Potts-Kant as a researcher, not a lab
tech (rather, the whistleblower was a lab tech). Also, it sounds like this was
not a penalty, but a settlement, which to me suggests it is simply
proportional to the value of the grants given to Duke as a result of the
fraudulent research.

~~~
AmazingAtalanta
Medscape published an article a few days ago (below) about this. I was under
the impression that there was proof that Duke management knew about the fact
that Potts-Kant falsified data. There was also evidence that she did not
actually buy supplies necessary to even run the experiments:

>>According to court records, colleagues had questions about whether Potts-
Kant had even purchased methacoline, a drug she said she used in experiments.
Meanwhile, Duke was trying to control the message. A colleague told Thomas at
the time that Duke's research integrity office did not want the case to
"snowball," and that it wanted to write any retraction notices.

That would suggest there was no way she could have had the data. Even after
they knew the data was bad (or probably bad), it was used by others as well
was Potts-Kant to secure additional funding. I think the court couldn't
definitively say when Duke became aware of the fraud, but I think they had
enough reason to be concerned about the integrity of the data that they should
have acted more strongly and been more forthright.

[https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/910922?nlid=129046_3902...](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/910922?nlid=129046_3902&src=wnl_newsexcl_190326_MSCPEDIT&uac=291999MV&impID=1918389&faf=1)

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dbcooper
Lot of focus on the technician, but the lab's P.I. must've been fully
involved.

~~~
ams6110
Maybe not. The PI (principal investigator) is mostly directorial/managerial on
most grants. Almost certainly the PI was not the person who was in the lab
running the experiments and collecting the data.

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Rafuino
Isn't it a PI's job to know what's going on in his/her lab?

~~~
ams6110
Yes of course, ultimately it's his or her responsibility. I was responding to
the "fully involved" allegation.

