A Copenhagen court has cleared neuroscientist Milena Penkowa of the most serious charges against her after she appealed a 2015 verdict that she had faked data.
According to the CPH Post, the Eastern High Court in Copenhagen dismissed the case. Although the court acknowledged she had committed fraud, it declared it was not “serious forgery.”
On Facebook, Penkowa posted a message (according to the Facebook translation):
Dismissed!!!!!! This is a victory for all you who are still fighting against injustice.
Penkowa had appealed a 2015 verdict by the Copenhagen City Court, which handed down a suspended sentence of nine months for forging experiments in her 2003 thesis.
According to her website, Penkowa currently conducts dog therapy, and is available for speaking engagements. In 2013, we reported that she had spoken at a museum exhibition by a Scientology-founded group.
Penkowa did not respond to requests for comment.
This is just one in a series of career penalties Penkowa has faced in recent years. She lost a professorship position, has earned six retractions (as well as multiple corrections), and in 2013 she and her co-author Bente Klarlund Pedersen earned an official stamp of scientific dishonesty from the Danish Committees for Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD, or UVVU in Danish).
(Klarlund Pedersen eventually had some of those findings reversed by the UVVU, and was cleared of them by a Danish court in 2015.)
In 2010, according to the University Post, Penkowa received a three month suspended sentence for embezzlement, document forgery, and “fabrication of evidence.”
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You may of course write that Penkowa was cleared of the most serious charges against her. But it really was a ruling based on statute of limitations. The court found her as guilty as previously on the scientific issues.