university officials applauded a federal appeals court decision to throw accusations by a former graduate student in his school defrauded the federal Government wrongly taking credit for his work in grant applications. On January 22, the Appeal Court firmly rejected the accusations made by the applicant, nutritionist Pamela Berge, easing fears of universities they could face a wave of similar lawsuits.
The lawsuit stems from working Berge in 1987 as a researcher study visit cytomegalovirus (CMV) at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB). Three years later, a graduate student accused Berge UAB plagiarizing his work. The university has conducted two surveys, but found no fault, and the Department of Health and Human Services apparently refused to take the case. Thus in 1993, Berge prosecuted under the False Claims Act - which allows "qui tam" lawsuits by citizens who allege fraud in government contracts - saying UAB and four of its researchers had made false statements in grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded the work of CMV. In 1995, a federal court in Baltimore UAB ordered to pay $ 1.65 million and researchers $ 10,000, of which 30% went to Berge.
The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, however, was not persuaded by allegations of Berge. He found that the alleged false statements "are not significant to [NIH's] funding decisions, and ... in fact, are not even wrong." And the court found that Berge, when a doctoral student at Cornell University, had overestimated his contribution: "The pride of any graduate student to think that these subsidies depend on the results of his work is beyond belief This is not the way. Big science works "One of the lawyers Berge, Alexander T. Bok Boston, said she will appeal
university groups -.. Including several filed amicus curiae briefs in the case - the language hope scathing court discourage other qui tam suits. the decision, said the lawyer of the UAB, Barbara Mishkin Washington sends the message that this kind of dispute between the co-authors "are not a federal case. "
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