Last week a researcher working in a lab focusing on an HIV vaccine
was convicted of research fraud by a federal judge who sentenced
the researcher to 57 months in prison and ordered him to pay back
$7.2 million that was received in NIH grant funds. The Washington
Post has one version of the story; see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/07/01/researcher-who-spiked-rabbit-blood-to-fake-hiv-vaccine-results-slapped-with-rare-prison-sentence/
Medscape provides another:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/847589
Why did he do it? The Medscape article provides one explanation
which I quote:
|A Fear of Disappointing Others?
|
|The attorney for Dr Han said in a court filing that the fraud stemmed
|from an innocent mistake, which is what his client claimed in his
|signed confession. The first rabbit sera thought to have HIV antibodies
|had been contaminated accidentally with human sera, but Dr Han did
|not discover that until after he had reported the flawed data to Dr Cho
|and sent off the rabbit sera for confirmatory testing.
|
|"Dr Han, however, could not bring himself to reveal that knowledge
|to Dr Cho," his attorney wrote. "He could not bring himself to dash
|the hopes of the research team and all the others interested in the
|perceived potential and progress of their efforts."
|
|At the same time, Dr Han also hoped that the research would eventually
|yield a genuinely effective vaccine. So he kept it going by
intentionally
|spiking rabbit sera with human antibodies and reporting falsified test
|results to Dr Cho from that point on, his attorney said. "Dr Han
allowed
|an accident to turn into a lie." His crime reflected "a human failing
and
|the fear of disappointing others."
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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