Guilty Plea to Research Misconduct Results in 4 1/2 Year Prison Sentence

By Michael L. Smith, R.R.T., J.D., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law and George F. Indest III, J.D., M.P.A., LL.M., Board Certified by The Florida Bar in Health Law

MS_smDong-Pyou Han, a former Iowa State University scientist was sentenced to four-and-a-half (4 ½)  years in prison on Wednesday July 1, 2015, for falsifying his research results concerning the effectiveness of an experimental HIV vaccine.  A plea agreement also required Han to pay $7.2 million in restitution to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded the research.  Han was testing the experimental HIV vaccine on rabbits.  He spiked the rabbit blood with human antibodies to make it falsely appear […]