Research's Scarlet List

When well-known obesity researcher Eric Poehlman admitted he had fabricated data in 17 applications for US federal grants and agreed to be the first researcher barred for life from seeking federal funding (see The Scientist Daily News, March 21, 2005), his name was added to a list of more than 40 other researchers currently enduring lesser penalties for similar but generally lesser crimes.

The list, available at http://silk.nih.gov/public/cbz1bje.@www.orilist.html, is known as the Public Health Service (PHS) Administrative Actions Listing, and it names all researchers found guilty of some type of misconduct by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which typically penalizes them by temporarily barring them from receiving federal funds. Only days before Poehlman's case splashed across national headlines, another name, Gary Kammer, was added to the list. The Wake Forest University, NC, researcher admitted to falsifying and fabricating research findings from two grant submissions. According to...