Category: Legal Threats

The U.S. government recently announced a record $6.8 billion in False Claims Act settlements and judgments in 2025, the most in a single year since the law’s enactment 163 years ago. For those concerned with scientific integrity, another significant FCA record was also set in 2025: the number of suits brought under the FCA by private individuals against entities they believe defrauded the federal government. 

Successful qui tam suits brought under the FCA can come with incentivizing monetary rewards – sometimes substantial – for the whistleblowers. Whistleblowers filed a record 1,297 of these so-called qui tam lawsuits in 2025, up from 979 suits in 2024. 

Despite the FCA’s banner year, legal experts say a pending challenge may weaken the law’s whistleblower power and impact. A Florida district court recently struck down the FCA’s qui tam provisions as unconstitutional because these suits involve individuals suing on behalf of the government. If an appeals court upholds the decision, some whistleblowers in that court’s jurisdiction may no longer get paid for exposing wrongdoing, a change that could allow more fraud to slip under the radar, legal analysts say.

An appellate court has dismissed a legal challenge by a cancer researcher against her former institution, ruling the university’s misconduct investigation and disclosure process did not violate her right to due process.  

In 2020, The Ohio State University determined that Flavia Pichiorri, a former postdoc in the lab of Carlo Croce, was responsible for manipulating and reusing images in four publications, spanning from her time in Croce’s lab through establishing her own lab at Ohio State. Pichiorri sued the Ohio State Board of Trustees in April 2023 alleging the release of its misconduct findings to “prestigious journals” and her new employer violated her due process rights, defamed her, and inflicted emotional distress, among other claims. 

But in a December 19 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concluded Pichiorri’s complaint never identified an adequate “liberty interest” worthy of procedural protections under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The appeals court affirmed a lower court’s decision tossing the complaint for failure to state a constitutional claim. 

The first weeks of the second Trump administration have brought unprecedented shock and awe to science. In response, the leaders of the scientific community must cease their hand-wringing and align behind two strong approaches to dealing with the chaos: protest and candor.

I write these words as an attorney representing whistleblowers of scientific fraud. Prior to law school, I was an investigative journalist focused on this same phenomenon. Today I represent scientists and technical experts independent of whether the falsified data they have uncovered support a political agenda. Twenty years of experience investigating, exposing and, when necessary, litigating cases of scientific fraud, has, however, led me to think in terms of a different kind of politics: the politics of nonconfirmatory data. Any research-based organization – a university, a healthcare provider, a laboratory or a corporation – faces a daily challenge from data gathered by scientists within that contradict the scientific hypotheses that are bringing in the money.