Floor Speech of Sen. Chuck Grassley on The Importance of Federal Research Spending Integrity

Floor Speech of Sen. Chuck Grassley
The Importance of Federal Research Spending Integrity
Delivered Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Earlier this year, I learned about a case of research misconduct that happened at Iowa State University.  A team of scientists was working on a vaccine to fight HIV.  One of the researchers, Dr. Han, committed fraud to make it appear as though the vaccine was working.  He purposely spiked testing samples so it looked like the vaccine fought HIV.  Dr. Han’s fraud helped his team get $19 million in federal grant money from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH.

NIH is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.  It gives out billions of dollars in research grants every year.  In 2013, NIH gave out over $20 billion in research grants.
That is a huge amount of money.  The government has a responsibility to make sure this money is well-spent.  Unfortunately, it looks like the government is relying on the grant recipients to do oversight instead of doing any of its own.

In this case, officials at Iowa State University were unaware of the fraud until another team of scientists couldn’t duplicate the results.  Iowa State University took the problem seriously and notified HHS.  But if it weren’t for Iowa State University’s actions, I doubt the government ever would have found out about this fraud.

The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) at HHS was created to prevent and investigate research misconduct.  ORI investigated the allegations of misconduct at Iowa State University, and confirmed that Dr. Han knowingly committed fraud.  Dr. Han even admitted to the fraud.

ORI imposed only a three-year ban on Dr. Han’s receiving any more federal grant money.  That’s basically a slap on the wrist from ORI.  It makes no sense that someone who admitted to that level of fraud could be eligible for another federal grant in just three years.  I asked ORI why the penalty for Dr. Han was so light, and if it would try to recover any of the $19 million in research grants.  The taxpayers subsidized what was supposed to be promising HIV research, but it was based on Dr. Han’s fraud.  His phony results were the basis for those grant applications.

ORI says it considers a three-year ban a very strict penalty.  In fact, ORI says that three years is the maximum penalty it can give, unless there are aggravating circumstances. That three-year limit is set by the White House Office of Management and Budget, so ORI claims its hands are tied.  But in this case, ORI did not even try to demonstrate aggravating circumstances to enforce a longer debarment.  ORI admitted that there is nothing to keep Dr. Han from conducting research again funded by American taxpayers after three years.

ORI claims it does not have the authority to recover funds in cases of research misconduct.  Think about that.  The Office of Research Integrity says it is the responsibility of the agency that issued the research grant to recover money obtained by fraud.

So, I asked NIH about its involvement in this case.  At first, NIH said that only $500,000 of the $19 million in research grants would be recovered.  NIH also claimed it was not responsible for recovering the fraudulent grant money.

According to NIH, oversight is the responsibility of the educational institution receiving the money.  NIH said, “ISU as grantee is legally responsible and accountable for the use of funds provided for the performance of grant-supported project or activity.”

It looks like each office I asked just passes the buck along to someone else.  But, a pass-the-buck attitude doesn’t work when it comes to government oversight.  I also asked HHS about the case.  HHS said that “grant recipients have the primary obligation to conduct investigations of their own researchers.”

Universities need to be responsible and accountable with federal research grants.  By taking action when it learned of the fraud, Iowa State University did that in this case.  But that does not give the government an excuse not to do oversight. And if the government is relying on universities to report fraud instead of doing oversight, there are probably other cases of fraud that are never caught.  If you write a taxpayer-funded check, you should be responsible for making sure the money is being well-spent.

The funding agency, and HHS as a whole, should do more to protect taxpayer dollars, especially when many are calling for even more taxpayer funding for NIH.  And ORI has a clear mission to prevent and investigate cases of research misconduct.

But I am concerned not only about this case, but allegations about ORI made by its former Director, Dr. David Wright.  Dr. Wright resigned only days after I started my investigation.  In his resignation letter, Dr. Wright said that bureaucratic red tape was keeping him from doing his job. He said up to 65 percent of his time was spent “navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy to secure resources and … get permission for ORI to serve the research community.”

I take his allegations seriously, and HHS should, too.  When researchers abuse the public’s trust, ORI should use all the powers at its disposal to resolve the problem.

I recently learned that Dr. Han has been indicted for four felony counts of making false statements.  Regardless of the outcome of this indictment, it is encouraging to see an effort to increase accountability for the spending of taxpayer dollars.

Also, earlier this week NIH confirmed for The Des Moines Register that it would stop the final grant payment.  That will save taxpayers $1.4 million.

It’s good news that NIH is taking action to recover taxpayer money in this fraud case.  But this is only one case, and NIH’s actions came after months of public attention and my investigating.  I worry that other cases may go unnoticed or unaddressed if there isn’t a public outcry.  We can’t afford that.  Federal oversight of research funds is far too weak.  The government is doing far too little to recover money lost to fraud.  We can’t afford a fund-it-and-forget-it attitude.  Fraudsters need to be held accountable.  And people handing out taxpayer money need to know that if they are careless with it, Uncle Sam will come knocking at the door for a refund.

Although Secretary Sebelius recently left HHS, I expect Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to take this issue seriously.  Ultimately, the Secretary of HHS has the responsibility to ensure that health research grants are not abused.  She needs to ensure that agencies within HHS have all the tools they need to recover money lost to fraud and to prevent it from happening in the first place.
Secretary Burwell should investigate Dr. Wright’s allegations about ORI and fix the problems he outlined.

Oversight is an extremely important part of the government’s role.  Unfortunately, it is often ignored and taxpayer dollars are abused. When researchers abuse the public’s trust, HHS and its components should use all the powers they have to investigate and resolve the problem.  They owe it to the American taxpayers.
 

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