A federal agency determined that an Ohio State researcher misused nearly $100,000 in grant money in 2006, but the university has failed to discipline him.
One year later, Sheryl Szeinbach was the target of a university investigation when she published a paper and failed to cite data from one of her previous studies. Now Szeinbach, a professor and researcher in the College of Pharmacy, is trying to prove in court that the university inconsistently enforces its research rules.
Szeinbach’s attorney, Eric Rosenberg, says his client’s punishment was retaliation for her discrimination lawsuit against OSU. He contends that OSU overlooks “far more egregious” research violations, citing the case of Robert Lee, another professor and researcher in the pharmacy school.
Lee was the target of a 2006 investigation by the National Institutes of Health, when he was accused of double-dipping from federal grant money. According to the claims that launched the probe, Lee applied for two research grants from the same federal agency to pay for two nearly identical projects — a violation of national research rules.
The investigation concluded that although the two projects contained “some overlap,” they were “basically different.” However, investigators determined that Lee had misused grant funding.
According to the report, Lee and the co-founder of his business, Manohar Ratnam, each received a $12,500 yearly salary from the grant, even though the grant agency told Lee to reduce that number to $5,000. Lee also failed to document thousands of dollars charged to subcontractors, the report states.
Officials at OSU never initiated a probe into the allegations, even though the investigation recommended that the National Cancer Institute recover the money from Lee.
“As far as I can tell none of the money has been repaid,” Rosenberg told The Lantern Thursday.
Lee said in an e-mail that he was advised not to comment on the case, but said the accusations against him “have been made in bad faith and are without merit.”
Attorneys for OSU have filed a motion to bar Rosenberg from using Lee’s misconduct as evidence, saying Lee did not violate university research rules.
“Because such allegations do not fall within the definition of research misconduct under the Research Misconduct Policy, OSU’s Office of Research Compliance had no basis to investigate such allegations under the Research Misconduct Policy,” according to documents filed by OSU.
OSU research integrity officer Jennifer Moseley said in a deposition that double-dipping in grant money would not prompt an investigation by her research integrity office. But the NIH concluded that Lee had committed financial fraud, which Moseley says “probably could” have been a violation of OSU policy.
Neither OSU’s policies at the time nor its current policies specifically deal with double-dipping. But both sets of rules contain a catchall stating that OSU can investigate and punish practices that “seriously deviate” from those commonly accepted in the academic community.
“It appears that either one, double-dipping or misuse of funds, should at least have been considered within violation of the research misconduct policy,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg also says Lee hired his wife using grant money. But OSU attorneys say this only violates the university’s anti-nepotism policy, not its research rules.
“It would seem to me that paying your wife would deviate from commonly accepted practices because it violates the nepotism policy,” Rosenberg said.
The consequences of misusing federally funded grant money can be severe, sometimes resulting in criminal charges. St. Louis University paid a $1 million settlement in 2008 after the university’s School of Public Health manipulated federal grants to increase pay for faculty. In 2005, a professor at University of Vermont’s College of Medicine agreed to a criminal and civil settlement after he used fabricated data to receive millions of dollars in research grants.
Similarly, OSU “could face serious monetary sanctions” for overlooking Lee’s violations, according to documents filed by Rosenberg.
OSU attorneys want many of the documents related to Lee’s grant to remain secret. That may be because the documents contain trade secrets, Rosenberg states in court documents, but he says he should be able to use the papers as proof of retaliation against Szeinbach.
He claims that professor Rajesh Balkrishnan initiated the complaints against Szeinbach’s research because her lawsuit accused him of discrimination. In a 2008 e-mail obtained by Rosenberg, Balkrishnan says he would withdraw his complaint against Szeinbach if she withdrew her “baseless allegations of gender based discrimination.”
Balkrishnan left OSU last summer and took a job at the University of Michigan.
“I have moved away from the Ohio State University in 2009 primarily because of the terrible environment created by these lawsuits which according to me are based on completely false and unsubstantiated allegations by the plaintiffs,” Balkrishnan said in an October e-mail to The Lantern.
Rosenberg is uncertain when the judge will decide if Lee’s misconduct can be used as evidence in the case.
But the bottom line, says OSU spokesman Jim Lynch, is that the
university did nothing wrong. He said in an e-mail that “the university expects that once the facts are known by the court, the administrative actions and decisions of the university will be upheld.”
