Last August, a U.S. federal research misconduct watchdog announced findings that a longtime researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles named Janina Jiang faked data in 11 grant applications.
More than a month later, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) issued a rare correction to its announcement, saying “additional information” from UCLA indicated that one of the grants “did not fund or contain falsified/fabricated data.” The watchdog agency said it would remove the application in question from its findings of research misconduct.
The grant, UL1 TR000124, helped fund the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) with $57 million from 2012-2015. The listed principal investigator, Steven M. Dubinett, is the interim dean for UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
At the time of the correction, we wondered how a report that would have had to be reviewed by multiple officials – and lawyers – at both institutions could include such a mistake, and filed public records requests to find out.
As we reported last November, through a public records request, we obtained UCLA’s report on its research misconduct investigation of Jiang, as well as two letters from university officials asking ORI to amend the Federal Register notice about its findings to remove the CTSI grant.
“Erroneous information” about the source of funding for Jiang’s research had been given to the inquiry and investigation committees and made it into the report sent to ORI, the second letter stated. But how the mistake happened, or why UCLA didn’t discover it until after ORI announced the findings, remained unclear.
Through a separate federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we have obtained email correspondence between ORI and Jiang, ORI and UCLA officials, and internal discussions among ORI staffers about the request to correct the Federal Register notice.
But now we have even more questions. The emails we received were heavily redacted for “unwarranted invasions of personal privacy” and the “deliberative process privilege,” which allows the government to withhold information on how agency staff members make decisions.
We’ve pieced together the following timeline from the emails. It’s a lot of detail, but we think it offers a glimpse into how the investigation sausage is made:
- Aug. 27, 2021: ORI informed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research about UCLA’s findings of research misconduct by Jiang in 11 grant applications, including the CTSI grant. (pp. 198-9)
- April-May 2022: ORI staff drafted and revised a Voluntary Settlement Agreement (VSA) and other documents related to Jiang’s case. (p. 196)
- June 8: A staffer sent Alexander Runko, director of ORI’s Division of Investigative Oversight, a revised memo and VSA. “I have added the UL1 grant back in the documents and [redacted],” he or she wrote. Unstated is why that grant, which UCLA later asked to remove from the findings, had apparently been taken out of the documents before being added back to the file. (p. 192)
- June 16: After additional edits and discussion among ORI staff, the agency sent Jiang a letter with the VSA. (p. 186)
- June 30: Runko sent Jiang an email following up on a meeting, with a revised VSA and “statements from ORI that you can share with your supervisor” that were redacted. (p. 181)
- July 15 and 18: Jiang and Runko exchanged a flurry of emails about the VSA and the supervision plan for Jiang’s research. Runko revised the VSA twice in response to Jiang’s requests. All specifics are redacted. (pp. 151-163)
- July 19: Jiang signed the VSA. (p. 151)
- July 22: Wanda K. Jones, acting ORI director, approved the VSA, and Elisabeth Handley, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, signed it. (pp. 133-140)
- Aug. 2: An NIH staffer asked Runko which submission of the CTSI grant contained the fabricated figure 6 mentioned in the report: “I don’t see an [redacted] after the grant number.” The reply from ORI was almost completely redacted, but the NIH apparently found it “very helpful.” (pp. 200-1)
- Aug. 5: ORI’s findings of research misconduct by Jiang were published in the Federal Register.
- Aug. 11: An ORI staffer sent a note to Runko about a conversation he or she had with a UCLA official about the Jiang announcement and CTSI grant, and UCLA’s desire for a correction to the Federal Register notice. “UCLA may want to issue a clarification or statement on how the grant (UL1 TR000124) was involved,” the staff member wrote. The staffer said he or she had checked the report and found “it clearly states the UCLA CTSI Grant #UL1 TR000124.” “They did provide a clarification, when I was not able to find the figure in grant [sic],” the staff member wrote, but whatever UCLA said was redacted from the email.
- “I don’t see a reason to change anything unless they provide some additional justification,” Runko wrote in a reply the same day. The staff member replied with a clarification that was mostly redacted. This much was intact: “The issue she is raising is that the questioned figure was not in UL1 grant application submitted to NIH.” (pp. 213-214)
- Aug. 16: Roger M. Wakimoto, UCLA’s vice chancellor for research and creative activities, sent a letter to ORI asking the agency to correct the Federal Register notice, as we previously reported. Wakimoto wrote that the allegation of fake data regarding the CTSI grant involved a proposal submitted not to the NIH, but to “an intramural granting program supported by funds from the CTSI award.” An ORI staffer sent an email to Runko responding to the letter, but the contents were entirely redacted. (p. 206)
- Sept. 9: Wakimoto sent a second letter to ORI, this time saying that UCLA had looked at its records again and found that the CTSI grant had not funded Jiang’s research at all. He again asked ORI to issue a correction to the Federal Register notice.
- The following week, ORI said it would issue a correction and staffers drafted and edited the notice, which was published on September 16. (pp. 220-7)
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What a discovery by RW!
Maybe I am missing something, but this sounds like a big nothingburger. UCLA gets 57M for a large project that has funds dispersed as sub-grants internally. Fraudster attempts to get such funds by writing a grant to UCLA, not to NIH. It’s still fraud, but different in scope.
Put yourself in the shoes of whoever wrote the large grant (likely Dubinett and a few colleagues). Of course you would not want your grant to be involved in this mess…
This is essentially what I suggested happened when RW first reported on the story. As you put it, this is really a “nothingburger”, at least w/ respect to UCLA’s peripheral role.
Good point, AP. But lets’s also credit RW for revealing how complex and messy the process is for reaching some ORI findings. The wording for any PHS finding in a voluntary settlement agreement, as this was, is first reviewd and approved by the respondent,. The subsequent events had to reflect shortcomings which then arose from UCLA, causing extra work for ORI to “correct the literature.” I assume that goal is fully championed by Retraction Watch.
Sure, there is value in reporting the process. I can appreciate that.