A professor in the College of Pharmacy can continue to seek information about how the university handled allegations against one of her colleagues, a judge ruled last week.
Professor Sheryl Szeinbach, who has sued OSU for discrimination and retaliation, will now have access to two grant applications submitted by Robert Lee, a researcher who misused federal grant money, according to a federal investigation. OSU attorneys argued that the documents contain trade secrets and were irrelevant to Szeinbach’s suit.
Szeinbach filed a whistleblower complaint in December 2008
accusing Lee of applying for two federal grants to pay for the same research project, a violation of national research guidelines. She also alleged that Lee improperly used grant money to pay his wife, then an accounting student at OSU, and that he violated accepted publishing practices.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigated Lee and found that he misused nearly $100,000 in federal money by failing to document subcontractor work and overpaying himself and his business co-partner. The federal investigation found that the overlap in the grants did not violate its rules.
Although the investigators recommended that the National Cancer Institute recover the misused money, the judge wrote in his decision that “OSU eventually concluded that none of the allegations warranted further action on its part.”
OSU spokesman Jim Lynch says he cannot confirm or deny that university officials investigated Lee, as the case is still being investigated by the National Institutes of Health.
“We’re still bound by the confidentiality of the NIH and their investigation, until there’s a final report from the NIH,” he said.
But in their motion to keep the documents private, OSU attorneys wrote that OSU addressed the complaints against Lee, “ultimately concluding that none of the allegations of misconduct alleged against Dr. Lee warranted further action by OSU.”
The nepotism complaint was “appropriately handled” by the College of Pharmacy, according to documents filed by the university.
The allegations of grant overlap, the attorneys wrote, did not fall under OSU’s research misconduct policy and were sufficiently investigated by the federal government.
However, in his ruling last week Magistrate Judge Mark Abel wrote that Szeinbach’s attorney presented testimony “that lends weight” to her argument that Lee’s behavior falls under the same policy OSU is applying to her behavior.
Abel cited testimony by Jennifer Moseley, OSU’s research integrity officer, and Matthew Platz, a former OSU provost. When asked about the allegation that Lee committed financial fraud by misusing federal grant money, Moseley said: “Financial fraud probably could be determined as another — another practice that deviates or significantly deviates and could fall under that. It has not been utilized for that type of activity before, though,” Moseley said.
Abel also cited this exchange between Platz and Szeinbach’s attorney Eric Rosenberg:
“If a researcher puts his spouse — hypothetically — who is an accounting student, on — is paid out on a grant, could that be — I know you don’t have all the facts, but could it be research misconduct?” Rosenberg asked.
“Of course,” Platz said. “If that accounting student is not doing any of the work, is not doing any of the work called for in the grant proposal, then that is an inappropriate use of sponsored funds.”
Abel found that the testimony demonstrated that Szeinbach “has a plausible argument” that the policy that applies to her should also apply to Lee.
Abel wrote that the evidence she is seeking from OSU “is reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.”
Szeinbach will use the information about Lee in court to try to prove that her colleagues punished her in retaliation for her lawsuit. She was investigated in 2007 when she failed to cite data from one of her previous studies in a publication. Court documents filed for
Szeinbach claim that OSU overlooks “far more serious” research violations, such as those committed by Lee.
