Purdue University has reached a settlement with the federal government to pay back grant money the institution received through applications submitted with falsified data, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana.
The settlement resolves allegations under the False Claims Act related to the case of Alice C. Chang (who also uses the name Chun-Ju Chang), a former associate professor of basic medical sciences at Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine in West Lafayette, In. Inside Higher Ed reported first on the settlement.
Last December, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found Chang had faked data in two published papers and nearly 400 images across 16 grant applications. As we reported then:
Two of the grant applications were funded. Chang received $688,196 from the National Cancer Institute, a division of the (NIH), from 2018-2019 for “Targeting metformin-directed stem cell fate in triple negative breast cancer.” The other grant ORI says was submitted in 2014 and funded, “Targeting cell polarity machinery to exhaust breast cancer stem cell pool,” does not show up in NIH RePorter. The rest of the grants were not approved.
Purdue agreed to pay the federal government $737,391, which the USAO release said “includes restitution and punitive damages.”
However, Tim Doty, a Purdue spokesperson, told us the university “did not agree to any punitive damages.” He said:
When in mid-2018 the university received notice from the U.S....
By the third quarter of 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has made plain that it will continue using the False Claims Act (FCA) to advance administration priorities. While the focus on diversi...