by NICHOLAS WADE
A charge of widespread scientific fraud, involving 26 articles published in 11 journals, was leveled by the University of Connecticut today against Dipak K. Das, one of its researchers, whose work reported health benefits in red wine.
Many of the articles reported positive effects from resveratrol, an ingredient of red wine thought to promote longevity in laboratory animals.
The charges, if verified, seem unlikely to affect the field of resveratrol research itself, because Dr. Das’s work was peripheral to its central principles, several of which are in contention. “Today I had to look up who he is. His papers are mostly in specialty journals,” said David Sinclair, a leading resveratrol expert at the Harvard Medical School.
The significance of the case seems more to reflect on the general system of apportioning research money. Researchers complain that federal grants are increasingly hard to get, even for high-quality research, yet money seemed to have flowed freely to Dr. Das, who was generating research of low visibility and apparently low quality. The University of Connecticut said Wednesday that it was returning two new grants to Dr. Das, worth a total of $890,000, to the federal government.
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