Eric Poehlman's Clinical Data Fabrication

Eric Poehlman made history as the first U.S. academic sentenced to prison for fabricating research data. While at the University of Vermont, he tampered with clinical data on menopause and aging across 10 federal grant applications and 17 published papers—a fraud that spanned over a decade. Poehlman's fabrications were not minor adjustments; he invented entire patient outcomes, altering body-mass index measurements and hormone levels to produce statistically significant results. This misconduct cost taxpayers nearly $3 million in fraudulent grant money from the National Institutes of Health, making it more financially egregious than #7 Haruko Obokata's STAP cell affair, which wasted mostly Japanese funds. A 2006 investigation led to Poehlman serving one year and one day in federal prison, along with a $180,000 fine and a lifetime ban from receiving federal research grants.