Former UVM professor pleads to research fraud
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By Lisa Rathke Associated Press - Published: April 5, 2005
BURLINGTON — A former professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine pleaded guilty Monday to fabricating research data to obtain a $542,000 federal grant.
Eric T. Poehlman, 49, was accused of making up research between 1992 and 2000 on closely watched topics such as menopause, aging and hormone supplements to win millions of dollars in grant money from the federal government.
Under a plea agreement on Monday, Poehlman pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements in an application for a grant on hormone replacement therapy from the National Institutes of Health.
Poehlman, who was employed at UVM from 1987 to 1993 and as a tenured professor from 1996 to 2001, now works as research consultant in Montreal. He faces up to five years in prison, three years on supervised release and a $250,000 fine.
As part of the plea agreement and because of Poehlman’s cooperation with the investigation, the government has agreed not to charge Poehlman with any other criminal offenses.
“This is an unprecedented case,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Kelly said after the hearing. “We’re taking an aggressive approach.” The criminal charge “gives us some assurance that we’ve corrected the scientific record.”
Poehlman is accused of requesting $11.6 million in federal funding for 17 grants using false data. Although he did not receive many of the grants, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture used $2.9 million in research funding based on the faulty applications, prosecutors said.
Standing before a judge in a dark suit for nearly 20 minutes on Monday, Poehlman agreed to waive his right to a trial and listened to the series of accusations against him.
Kelly said Poehlman made up data in preliminary study sections of grant applications in order to support scientific evidence and his expertise.
In one case he presented his findings on the metabolic effects of menopause in a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 1995. Poehlman said he had tested 35 healthy women and retested the same women six years later in the “The Longitudinal Menopause Study” when he never retested most of the women, Kelly said. He fabricated test results for 32 of the subjects, Kelly said.
Poehlman also made up the results from a 1999-2000 hormone replacement therapy study, prosecutors said. He suggested that hormone replacement therapy slowed weight gain in post-menopausal women when he sought the National Institutes of Health grant.
“Is that what happened?” U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions III asked.
“That’s correct,” Poehlman said.
Poehlman is scheduled to be sentenced on July 18.
Attorney Robert Hemley said he could not explain his client’s actions. “This not an excuse, but there is a lot of pressure on academic researchers to produce grants,” Hemley said.
“Dr. Poehlman did a lot of very good important scientific work over a long period of time. He takes full responsibility for making misstatements on grant applications.”
Poehlman has also agreed to pay $180,000 to settle a civil complaint.
He is also barred by the federal government from receiving Public Health Research funds and must retract or correct 10 articles.
UVM started to investigate Poehlman in December 2000 after one of his research assistants accused him of scientific misconduct.
During the two-year investigation, Poehlman deleted electronic evidence of his falsifications, presented false testimony and documents and influenced other witnesses to provide false documents, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Poehlman resigned from the medical school in 2001.
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