Grantee Misconduct: Dr. Eric T. Poehlman

Dr. Eric T. Poehlman, a former tenured research professor at the University of Vermont (UVM) College of Medicine in Burlington, Vermont, has agreed to a comprehensive criminal, civil, and administrative settlement related to his scientific misconduct in falsifying and fabricating research data in numerous federal grant applications and in academic articles from 1992 to 2002. A number of these applications were supported by NIH and NIH was cited as the sponsor within many of the resulting publications.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds meritorious biomedical research with the full expectation that its funded researchers will meet the highest standards of research integrity. NIH considers the scientific misconduct admitted by Dr. Poehlman deplorable and an affront to the American people and the vast community of scientists who conduct their research in an honorable and ethical manner.

Dr. Poehlman has agreed to retract or correct 10 scientific articles which he authored, published from 1992–2002, because of falsified or fabricated data. The retractions and corrections are a necessary and appropriate way to inform the scientific community of information that may influence their research. Many of these articles appeared in prominent, peer-reviewed medical journals and have been cited in subsequent research and grant applications by Dr. Poehlman and others. The work spanned areas of science including metabolism and aging, energy expenditures during the menopausal transition, and energy balance and body fat distribution. Currently, there are no funded grants supporting the work of Dr. Poehlman and, under the terms of the agreement, he will not be eligible for future NIH funding. The public announcement of the misconduct finding and the list of scientific articles to be retracted are available at http://www.ori.dhhs.gov/misconduct/cases/poehlman.shtml.

This page last reviewed on June 17, 2015