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  2. Unimpressive political stunt: HIV research fraud behind bars

Unimpressive political stunt: HIV research fraud behind bars

By sa smith on July 7, 2015.

So the guy who faked some HIV research results is officially going to spend about five years in jail, and has to pay back $7 million.

Former ISU scientist's stiff fraud sentence sends message

Yeah. It does send a message. The message is "The US government is not going to really investigate any of this, but every now and then we are going to go after some random nobody 'to send a message'".

My opinion on this topic has not changed in a year.

Oh! Thank god someone finally did something about that tyrant assistant professor from Iowa who fucked up, got caught, admitted what he did, and showed remorse. THANK GOOOOOD.

Thank GOD no one wasted their time investigating someone who worked for a major US research organization with his wife and 'career' underlings for ~35 years, got caught 'artistically' presenting results in a major scientific publication, never acknowledged any wrongdoing, showed no remorse, wasted millions upon millions of dollars and research man-hours, created panic in the general public. Thank GOD he got to 'retire' without any investigation into whether any of this other publications were also 'artistic', bending numerous fields of research down wrong paths.

No, thank GOD they got the assistant professor. From Iowa.

*smokecalmlywaifsoutERVsears*

Whatever.

Look, Han is an ass. Dirty piece of shit for faking data. He deserves to be punished.

But his 'punishment' is a dance-number to hide the fact 1) more of this kind of shit needs to be investigated, and 2) there are a *lot* bigger fish out there that need to be fried. Who werent. Inexplicably.

While I certainly fear taking research fraud more seriously could be exploited for personal/political gain (wasting time/resources if disgruntled ex-employees or competitors ledge false accusations against researchers), I do believe there is a happy-medium that can be reached between this, and the current state of doing virtually nothing when intent to deceive and defraud the research community is blatantly obvious.

Tags
General Science
HIV/AIDS
HIV-1

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This was Grassley's doing;* ORI gave him the standard three-year ban.

Once Grassley pressured DOJ – in the form of Nicholas Klinefeldt – into action, Han lacked the sophistication to do more than naively hope for the best from the justice system.

He shouldn't have returned from South Korea without a better deal in place, IMHO.

* With the administration's acquiescence, apparently.