o - CLOSEOUT FOR M95030009 This case came to OIG on February 21, 1995. , a program officer in the Division of , wat that she had received a telephone call from f the Department of (the complainant), who rep r complainant stated that Drs. -(Subject - - v (Subject #2) of the - - a suspected intellectual theft and violation of the integrity of confidential peer review. subjects) had published an article1 that was extraordinarily - #1) and & The (the similar to a proposal that the complainant and two collaborators had submitted to NSF.~ The complainant expressed concern that NSF had supplied one of the subjects with his proposal for confidential merit review and that the subjects had misappropriated the ideas in it. OIG determined that neither subject reviewed the proposal and, furthermore, that no one from the subjectsr university reviewed the proposal. In addition, none of the senior subject's recent collaborators (as listed on his latest NSF proposal) reviewed the proposal at issue. OIG consulted two knowledgeable scientists, both of whom examined the proposal, the article, and the complainant's letter to - OIG. Both concluded that, although there were similarities between the proposal and the article, these similarities in no way suggested that the article was derived from the proposal. Both scientists stated that the subjects and the complainant were pursuing a familiar analytic strategy in their area of research and that it was not surprising that they would develop similar equations and related lines of argument. OIG concluded that there was no evidence of intellectual theft I he article is entitled .I1 It was publis ''The proposal was entitled m page 1 of 2 M95-09 or violation of the integrity of the confidential merit review process. This inquiry is closed and no further action will be taken on this case. page 2 of 2
Intellectual Theft
Published by the National Science Foundation, Office of Inspector General on 1995-09-22.
Below is a raw (and likely hideous) rendition of the original report. (PDF)