Undisclosed Outside Research Support: The Time Was Already Promised Elsewhere

NIH and NSF Other Support disclosure false claims can arise when a grant applicant knowingly conceals research funding or commitments that matter to an award. An outside grant may already pay for the proposed work. Another appointment may come with funding and obligations missing from the application. If you work in research administration or inside the lab, you may know which support was left out and whose time was already promised elsewhere.

Civilian grant fraud cases turn on what the institution told the funding agency and what the research commitments actually were. We examine funding, work and disclosures.

What Other Support Tells NIH and NSF

Other Support tells a funding agency what resources and commitments sit behind the research proposal. The National Institutes of Health uses that information to assess whether the investigator has time for the project, whether another source duplicates the proposed funding and whether financial interests could affect the researcher’s objectivity.

In its Cleveland Clinic settlement announcement, the Justice Department explained that the National Institutes of Health requires disclosure of research support from every source in applications and follow-up award documents. The question continues after the award. A progress report can repeat the same omission that helped secure the funding in the first place.

For the National Science Foundation, the Stanford case shows why current and pending support extends beyond money already received. The government alleged omissions of funding investigators had received or expected to receive in direct support of their research. A commitment awaiting funding can belong in the picture alongside an active award.

The comparison reaches across projects. The application describes what the investigator proposes to do. Other Support describes the commitments surrounding that proposal. Effort reports later describe which work the institution charged to each award. Reading those records together connects the promised research to the time and money used to perform it.

What Is a False Certification?

A false certification can assure an agency that a grant submission is true and accurate while leaving required research support out. In Cleveland Clinic’s case, the government alleged that the institution repeatedly omitted outside grants that both supported the principal investigator’s research and already obligated that investigator’s time.

On the government’s account, the institution was asking the National Institutes of Health to fund a project using an incomplete account of the investigator’s existing commitments. That is the payment connection: what the agency understood about the proposed work, available time and other funding when it awarded the grant.

The agency relies on the scientific proposal as well as the funding disclosures. Fabricated research results can also mislead the agency deciding whether to fund the work.

Cleveland Clinic and the Time Already Promised Elsewhere

The Cleveland Clinic Foundation agreed to pay $7,600,000 to resolve allegations that applications and progress reports omitted a principal investigator’s pending or active foreign research support. The allegations concerned three National Institutes of Health awards and also reached the employees given access to submit reports.

The executed civil agreement covers November 1, 2013 through May 31, 2020.

The government alleged that foreign institutions supplied financial assistance and had already obligated the investigator’s research time, yet Cleveland Clinic certified the grant submissions as true and accurate. The alleged omissions concerned both the money supporting the work and the time available to do it.

An NIH Investigator’s Omitted Other Support and Shared Reporting Passwords

In the Cleveland Clinic case, the government connected an NIH investigator’s omitted Other Support with employees sharing reporting passwords. It alleged that employees improperly given access to the National Institutes of Health’s online reporting platform made some of the false submissions.

The principal investigator’s research commitments and the employee submitting a report are different parts of the same account. We examine who supplied the support information, who certified it and who had access to send it.

NIH Required Institutional Oversight

The National Institutes of Health imposed Specific Award Conditions across Cleveland Clinic’s grants, requiring a senior employee to personally attest to the truth, completeness and accuracy of Other Support information. The conditions also required an assessment of internal controls, mandatory training and an improvement plan with institutional oversight of investigators’ disclosures.

The agency’s response reached beyond the individual investigator: the institution had to address how it checked and submitted support information.

Scripps and the Time Spent Seeking the Next Grant

Time commitments matter because an institution can charge an existing research award for the work of seeking its next one. The Scripps Research Institute agreed to a $10 million settlement over allegations that it charged National Institutes of Health projects for faculty time spent on new applications, teaching, committee work and administration.

The whistleblower, a former employee, described the salary charge in his complaint:

U.S. ex rel. Burris v. The Scripps Research Institute, whistleblower’s complaint, paragraph 79

The complaint makes the work recognizable. Preparing a new proposal could require experiments, analysis and evidence supporting the next research question. A rejected application could require more experiments to answer reviewers before resubmission. The whistleblower alleged that Scripps charged that work to existing grants.

We see the absurdity in the allegation: the award for today’s research was paying for the competition to fund tomorrow’s. Same scientist. Different work.

The whistleblower alleged that proposal writing took time away from the medical research the grants funded and gave Scripps an unfair advantage over institutions that paid for proposal work themselves.

Other Support Promised the Time Before the Award

The complaint identifies a Just-in-Time report submitted to the National Institutes of Health on December 7, 2011, before a grant application was approved. It described active research commitments in calendar months and listed pending support as additional commitments. That report put the investigator’s portfolio before the agency while the funding decision was still pending.

The whistleblower also alleged that the effort forms used internal account numbers without explanations and failed to distinguish awarded-grant work from proposal writing, teaching and other activities. He said researchers were expected to cover their salaries and research staff salaries through federal grants.

Those allegations describe an institutional incentive as well as a reporting problem. New proposals consumed staff time. Existing awards supplied salary money. The effort report was supposed to account for the work charged to each award, but the whistleblower alleged that its design obscured the distinction.

This is a form of charging the government for another project’s costs. In a research setting, the telling comparison can be the experimental work behind a new application against the grant that paid for the scientist’s time.

Stanford’s Current and Pending Foreign Support Allegations

The government alleged that Stanford omitted foreign support in proposals to NASA and the National Science Foundation. In its October 2023 announcement, the Justice Department alleged that Stanford knowingly failed to disclose funding investigators received or expected to receive for their research.

The government also alleged that Stanford failed to disclose to the National Science Foundation a professor’s research funding connected with employment at Fudan University and funding from a foreign government’s national science foundation. The outside employment mattered because it came with research support that the agency allegedly was not told about.

UC Davis and Research Another Grant Had Funded

UC Davis illustrates how omitted support can conceal overlapping federal funding. The Regents of the University of California agreed to pay $499,700 to resolve allegations involving Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants.

The government alleged that UC Davis failed to disclose that a National Science Foundation grant and a previous federal grant were funding, or had funded, specific tasks charged to the Energy Department award. It also alleged that progress reports and renewal applications to the Energy Department listed accomplishments achieved under the other grants alongside the Energy Department work.

The government alleged that real accomplishments appeared in a misleading funding account, causing the agencies to approve duplicative funding they otherwise would not have awarded. A grants administrator who knows which award funded a task may recognize a problem that disappears when each progress report is read alone.

The settlement also required UC Davis to add training on effort reporting, reasonable costs and other grant requirements.

Columbia’s Effort Reports Assigned Work Without Checking It

Columbia University agreed to pay $9,020,073 and admitted that inaccurate effort reports led its ICAP public health program to charge federal grants for work that did not belong to them. The program’s AIDS and HIV work received federal funding, and the effort reports allocated employee costs among grants and other projects.

According to the Justice Department’s account of its complaint, finance staff supplied report information despite having limited or no knowledge of the grants employees actually worked on. Principal investigators allegedly certified batches of reports without checking whether the allocations were accurate.

The government’s complaint described a finance analyst who estimated that he spent approximately 15% to 20% of his time on a particular grant. His effort report assigned 85% to it. The government also alleged that grants paid for competitive proposal writing.

Columbia admitted failing to use a suitable way to verify salary charges against actual effort. The institution’s verification failure is the useful parallel: a report can carry a principal investigator’s certification while the people assigning the costs have not checked the work.

What Proof Do You Need as a Whistleblower?

We work with you to establish what the disclosure left out and how it affected the request for funding. Together, we examine the support forms, outside appointments, award records and effort reports that show what the institution represented to the agency and what it knew.

You may know why a commitment disappeared between the information supplied by the lab and the report sent to the agency. You may know that the account paying a salary supported a different project. We work through that discrepancy with you and connect it to the institution’s representations and requests for funding.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers. In the Scripps case, the Justice Department announced a $1.75 million whistleblower reward for the former employee.

When You Know What the Disclosure Left Out

If the lab’s commitments and the government’s paperwork tell different stories, speak with our whistleblower experts about the funding and time left off the form. We build your strongest case with you around the research commitments, the institution’s knowledge and the money it sought or charged. We bring in research grant fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand support disclosures and effort reporting, and stay beside you throughout the case.