ISU researcher quits amid allegations of AIDS-research fraud involving millions of federal dollars

[longship]

1. Thank goodness that science has the checks and balances to weed out these people.

The guy has utterly destroyed his career. He will never ever again find work in his field.

Fraud in science is not unknown, but thankfully it is rare. When it happens, it is almost always found by other scientists because the scientific method has checks and balances that are tough to get through. And since science is also competitive, there is always a chance that a competitor will find out the fraud. Regretfully, that same competitive spirit sometimes spurns some to cheat.

Thankfully, it rarely works. But only for a time. In the end, it is always found out.

Nota bene: in general, academic researchers do not get rich from their research. I have no idea what this guy was trying to prove by cheating. It certainly wasn't a Nobel Prize. This is just puzzling from all perspectives. Did he actually think he would get away with it?