U. of Kansas Researcher Is Penalized for Plagiarism

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has found that a University of Kansas researcher, Gerald Lushington, engaged in research misconduct on projects supported by National Institutes of Health grant money. According to a notice published in today’s Federal Register, Mr. Lushington, who is director of a bioinformatics center at Kansas and is director of its Molecular Graphics and Modeling Lab, approved “publication of three articles and one abstract he knew contained significant amounts of plagiarized text without attribution or citation from other writers’ published papers.” The notice says Mr. Lushington has agreed to undergo supervision of his research supported by the Public Health Service and to exclude himself from serving as an adviser to the service, among other things.