Paperwork mistakes ensnare health data expert

doi:10.1126/science.368.6491.567

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.368.6491.567
	Paperwork mistakes ensnare health data expert
	Jeffrey Mervis
	2020-05-08
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2020
英文摘要	Eva Lee is in high demand for her ability to crunch massive amounts of health care data. Government and public health officials fighting the COVID-19 pandemic are clamoring to use software that the Georgia Institute of Technology systems engineering professor began to develop nearly 2 decades ago to maximize the use of limited health resources. And Lee's participation in a group of U.S. scientists who raised an early alarm about the pandemic has drawn national media attention. In spite of the acclaim, Lee's future is in jeopardy. On 21 May, she is scheduled to be in a federal court in Atlanta learning her punishment for mishandling a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that supported her research. The judge's sentence, which follows her guilty plea in December 2019 to charges of providing false information to NSF, is likely to trigger a review by Georgia Tech officials that could lead to her dismissal. “I thought the plea would let me go back to work,” says Lee, whose plight has led dozens of colleagues to pen letters urging the federal government and the university to show leniency. But her case is a sobering reminder that, although institutions are responsible for ensuring that grants are properly managed, individual scientists can face serious consequences if they don't follow the rules. Over the years, Lee has received more than $10 million in grants from multiple U.S. government agencies to develop optimization models for improving health care. Yet it's one of the smallest of those awards—an NSF grant of $240,000 over 5 years—that has gotten her into so much trouble. That grant supported her continued participation in the Center for Health Organization Transformation (CHOT), a multisite project launched in 2008 by NSF's Industry-University Collaborative Research Centers program. Companies pay $50,000 a year to help shape the center's research agenda and use its findings. Lee's research has helped improve care for thousands of patients, including those at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, which cut emergency room waiting times by half and nearly eliminated postsurgical infections among cardiac patients. “Her model … gave me the data I needed to make the case for needed improvements,” says Michael Wright, a former senior vice president for operations at Grady. In 2014, NSF renewed CHOT, which is based at Texas A&M University, College Station, for 5 more years. But Lee says Georgia Tech, which had handled the grant's paperwork during its first phase, left her to oversee that task in its second phase. To meet NSF's rules, she had to document that Georgia Tech was receiving a total of at least $175,000 from at least three companies. But an investigation done by NSF's Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that she made up the numbers. “I had no idea what [the industry partners] were contributing,” she admits. “I knew that it was well over the limit. So I just put down $50,000 for each one.” Lee also admitted to OIG that when she needed the signature of a Georgia Tech administrator on annual reports to NSF, she simply lifted it from previous documents. Lee told investigators that she assumed the signature was still valid. In addition, Lee confessed that she had manipulated the process used to set the center's research priorities. Members of its Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) vote on those priorities after hearing pitches from each research team. But in an interview with OIG in April 2019, Lee “admitted that she [had] voted on behalf of IAB members.” Based on its investigation, NSF's OIG concluded Lee's behavior represented “a significant departure from accepted practices.” Her punishment, handed down in September 2019, was a 3-year ban as a reviewer or consultant on NSF grant proposals. But that didn't end matters. Lee was also the target of a federal investigation for aggravated identify theft for the purloined signature, and fraud for the incorrect information sent to NSF. (The U.S. attorney's office has declined to say why it decided to prosecute Lee.) If convicted, she would face a minimum of 2 years in prison. But after Lee's guilty plea to two lesser charges—filing a false statement to NSF and lying to OIG—the U.S. attorney promised to ask District Court Judge Steve Jones to impose 8 months of home confinement instead. Lee's lawyer, Buddy Parker, says the sentence should be no more than 6 months' probation, citing her services to public health and the nature of her offense. “Dr. Lee stole no monies from NSF,” he says. “She stole no monies from Georgia Tech.” Parker also decries what he calls “an abandonment … of prosecutorial discretion” and the government's refusal to agree to an out-of-court settlement. Lee and Parker are equally upset with Georgia Tech's behavior. One week after NSF interviewed her, Lee was suspended with pay, banned from campus, and denied access to her research data and her Georgia Tech email. Parker accuses the university of trying to cover up its own mistakes. Its program office “for over 3 years failed to support Dr. Lee in the administrative work with NSF,” Parker asserts. But Georgia Tech “disagrees” with that claim and disputes the idea “that she was left on her own,” says W. Blair Meeks, the university's assistant vice president for external communications. Lee's friends and colleagues don't excuse her errors, but they also don't seem surprised. Her personality and circumstances likely played a role in her predicament, they surmise. “She's flat-out brilliant. … She also wants to help people,” says Rice University mathematician Richard Tapia, a National Medal of Science winner and her graduate adviser in the 1990s. But Lee can have difficulty with some everyday tasks, he says. “She has trouble tying her shoelaces, she can't operate a copying machine. … She makes a lot of administrative mistakes. So do I,” Tapia says. “Fortunately, I have someone whose job is to save me. But Eva doesn't.” Mark Plausnitz, a Georgia Tech biochemical engineering professor who has known Lee for 20 years, says he's been able to use resources within his department to employ an assistant to help with the necessary paperwork on his grants. But he says Lee, who is in a different department in the engineering school, “doesn't have the benefit of someone like that.” Georgia Tech, like all large research universities, has an office responsible for managing external grants. But faculty members can't always count on getting the help they need from that office, Plausnitz says. Lee says program staff were “extremely helpful” during the first phase of her grant, but not the second phase. And without that help, she says, she cut corners. Lee's prolonged separation from campus has wreaked havoc on her lab, which 1 year ago included 15 Ph.D. students, 10 master's students, and 40 undergraduates, she says. That separation could become permanent if the university exercises its authority to dismiss a faculty member who has committed a felony. “We are not doing interviews about this because Dr. Lee has not been sentenced and she is undergoing employment review,” Meeks said when asked about Lee's prospects. “We do not want to disrupt either process.” With her fate in the balance, Lee has been working long hours from home, consulting with government officials and public health scientists on the pandemic. “I just want to get back to my students and my research,” she says.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/249751
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Jeffrey Mervis. Paperwork mistakes ensnare health data expert[J]. Science,2020.
APA	Jeffrey Mervis.(2020).Paperwork mistakes ensnare health data expert.Science.
MLA	Jeffrey Mervis."Paperwork mistakes ensnare health data expert".Science (2020).