DECEIT AT DUKE: A Duke University researcher's doubts about a colleague's work triggers an embarrassing $112 million verdict for academic fraud.

• Author: Martin, Edward

In the mouse room, the tiny research subjects took in less than a milliliter of air with each breath, a fraction of that of humans. But their bean-sized lungs eerily resemble those in people, and the technician who forced the mice to inhale substances, such as a drug that simulates asthma attacks, was accustomed to their Lilliputian dimensions. Someday, her data might help save human lives.

Erin Potts-Kant, then 24, joined Duke University in January 2006 and became an expert in measuring miniscule lung reactions to pollutants. A favorite of researchers in pulmonologist William Michael Foster's lab, she had been named clinical research coordinator.

"She ran a machine, an instrument, but basically she was a lab technician, not a researcher," says a close friend. "She was not the scientist. That was Foster." Nevertheless, Potts-Kant, with an undergraduate degree from UNC Chapel Hill, co-authored 38 research papers with the lab's prestigious lead investigator.

In September 2008, a young biologist who'd become enthralled with science joined Duke's cell biology lab. Four years later, he transferred to Foster's airway physiology lab as a research associate. Working shoulder to shoulder, Joe Thomas performed similar tasks and quickly became suspicious of her work. It was "too good," he fretted, with unusually low error rates.

Potts-Kant had a knack for routinely delivering data sought by researchers. Foster, a veteran professor in his 60s who joined Duke in 2002, exploded one day when another technician's ozone research didn't jibe with Potts-Kant's. "Erin always got these experiments to work!" he yelled.

Thomas was just out of graduate school and had degrees from two small Pennsylvania colleges, but he nevertheless began challenging his superiors at Duke, one of the world's premier research institutions.

"He thought he had to, not that he wanted to," says John Thomas, his brother. He bristled when they turned a deaf ear, and he had a chilling notion why they did.

Each year, the National Institutes of Health awards some $40 billion in 50,000 competitive grants, triggering a feeding frenzy among scientists. Though Duke has an operating budget of about $2.7 billion this year, its research largely funds itself through grants, as at many universities. At nearby UNC Chapel Hill, for example, about 70% comes from such sources. In 2018, Duke was the nation's eighth-largest NIH recipient, with more than 800 grants totaling $475 million.

Behind the placid deportment, though, grant pressure is palpable on research campuses. Academic reputations and the jobs of Thomas, Potts-Kant and others in the lab may depend on landing government money. Grants are awarded based on their potential for medical good, but another factor is even more important.

In academia, it's called research integrity, and Thomas was increasingly certain Potts-Kant was doctoring the data from her tiny subjects.

Capping a years-long legal fight that spanned the globe, a federal court agreed with Thomas. In March, Duke agreed to pay $112.5 million for "use of falsified data to claim millions of grant dollars from the National Institutes of Health," according to Maureen Dixon, special agent in charge of the Inspector General's Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Matthew G.T. Martin, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, casts doubt on Duke's defense that it didn't know about the falsification. In any case, that's no excuse, the Greensboro-based prosecutor says.

"Individuals and institutions that receive research funding from the federal government must be scrupulous in conducting research for the common good and rigorous in rooting out fraud," he says.

The most stunning turn might involve Thomas, now 35, living in Cary and plotting his future. He filed a lawsuit against Duke under the federal False Claims Act in 2013, alleging that Potts-Kant, Foster, other researchers, the university and its health system knowingly used flawed data to obtain grants from the NIH and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, worth more than $200 million. His legal team included his brother, John, a white-collar crime attorney in Roanoke, Va., who is an expert in science law and a Marine Corps Reserve lawyer.

A settlement, shielded from public view until recently, shows that Thomas was awarded $33.7 million as a whistleblower. He left Duke in 2014--he "had no choice" because of a poisoned work environment, according to his brother. He took a position performing similar research...