MIT Terminates Researchers Over Fabrication

The article reports that a rising star at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the hot field of RNA interference (RNAi) was dismissed last week after admitting that he had fabricated and falsified data in grant applications, submitted manuscripts, and one published paper, the university reported in a statement. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena has now begun reviewing two papers published by the researcher, Luk van Parijs, when he was a postdoc there. Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, where Van Parijs was a graduate student, is also scrutinizing his early work. Graduate students and postdocs in Van Parijs's lab first approached MIT administrators in August 2004 with allegations of research misconduct, says Alice Gast, MIT's associate provost and vice president for research.he university launched an investigation, put Van Parijs on paid leave, pulled his lab Web site off the MIT server, and reassigned his lab members to other faculty.