Purdue University has reached a settlement with the federal government to pay back grant money the institution received through applications submitted with falsified data, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana.
The settlement resolves allegations under the False Claims Act related to the case of Alice C. Chang (who also uses the name Chun-Ju Chang), a former associate professor of basic medical sciences at Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine in West Lafayette, In. Inside Higher Ed reported first on the settlement.
Last December, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found Chang had faked data in two published papers and nearly 400 images across 16 grant applications. As we reported then:
Two of the grant applications were funded. Chang received $688,196 from the National Cancer Institute, a division of the (NIH), from 2018-2019 for “Targeting metformin-directed stem cell fate in triple negative breast cancer.” The other grant ORI says was submitted in 2014 and funded, “Targeting cell polarity machinery to exhaust breast cancer stem cell pool,” does not show up in NIH RePorter. The rest of the grants were not approved.
Purdue agreed to pay the federal government $737,391, which the USAO release said “includes restitution and punitive damages.”
However, Tim Doty, a Purdue spokesperson, told us the university “did not agree to any punitive damages.” He said:
When in mid-2018 the university received notice from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calling into question the authenticity of some results that Dr. Alice Chang had included in proposal submissions to federal funding agencies since 2014, Purdue University cooperated and thoroughly investigated the alleged misconduct. When Purdue’s investigation was nearing conclusion in mid-2019, Dr. Chang left the university.
Based on its investigation, Purdue agreed that the funding was not deserved and should be returned.
Chang has been banned from all federal contracting, including grant funding, for 10 years.
The False Claims Act allows the government to recover up to three times the amount it was defrauded, meaning that Purdue could have had to pay much more, said Eugenie Reich, a whistleblower lawyer and former investigative science journalist.
“I think the university has got off relatively lightly in comparison to what it could have been in recognition of it self-investigating,” Reich told Retraction Watch. “This kind of settlement should incentivize other universities to self-investigate.”
Indeed, the amounts of settlements can vary a lot. Massachusetts General Hospital got off with repaying the government less than $900,000 in grant funds in 2021, compared with nearly $10 million in an earlier case that the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, another Harvard facility, paid to settle claims based on allegations it said it brought to the government’s attention. Columbia University had to pay $9.5 million in 2016, and Duke University settled a case for $112.5 million in 2019.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or . If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
The scammer should be personally responsible for at least the portion of the recovery that was used for her salary.
It’s a sad picture when someone has to submit 16 grants to get 2 of them funded – quite literally a “throw shit at the wall and see what sticks” approach!
If a junior faculty member is submitting more than half-a-dozen grants and not getting any hits, that’s a red flag for the Dept. chair or others to step in and help them write better grants. Or maybe that happened and the individual was incapable of accepting advice on such matters?
Either way, this case suggests the process for helping junior faculty get funded at Purdue is less than optimal – yes she got funded eventually, and from the school perspective money is all that matters, but what a waste of everyone’s time that it took 16 attempts to do so.
There have been periods in my field where the success rate overall was under 10%. At that point it’s not much use coaching (or blaming) the individual applicant. It’s a game of musical chairs with 10x more people than chairs. No matter what you do, most people will be left standing.
I lost my research faculty position after 7 grants in a row failed. They could have been better grants, no doubt, but with those numbers, someone is going to have this experience.
Maybe these faculty are pushed to submit more of anything and everything to “pump up the numbers” for the big bosses.
For example, in a chart a little down the way on this page, https://www.purdue.edu/research/oevprp/researcher-resources/academic-and-research-excellence-update/2023-10-24.php Purdue University proudly announces the growth in the number of grant submissions and the attendant growth in the number of $ asked for in these submissions. The text above the caption states that “this pipeline of proposals is a great sign for funding this fiscal year. Congratulations to all!” It could be argued that it would be wise to first verify the legitimacy of these proposals, and also await the outcome of their review process, before making congratulatory remarks.
Incidentally, Alice C. Chang appears to have changed her name and become a Dean in Taiwain, according to this report: https://news-sciencenet-cn.translate.goog/htmlnews/2023/5/501279.shtm?_x_tr_sl=bg&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
You cheat, you win grants, you get caught, you get promoted to dean.
So it goes.