I am a determined attorney committed to tackling fraudulent science, analyzing the incentives that drive it, and recovering misdirected research funding. I am also a former investigative science journalist motivated to see the scientific record corrected.
I entered science journalism after graduating from Balliol College, Oxford, in Physics and Philosophy. My fifteen-year journalism career included hard-hitting reports on cases of scientific fraud in New Scientist, Nature, and other publications. Examples included my investigations of the work of an MIT professor who was fired and later prosecuted, of a Purdue professor who was later debarred, and of a University of Minnesota professor who left the country and later earned the distinction of the most highly-cited publication to be retracted. I also authored a book about a condensed matter physics fraud at Bell Laboratories, which I re-issued in 2025 after rights reversion.
Over time, I observed the limits of investigative journalism in tackling fraud cases. Cover-ups had always happened, but with the rise of social media, universities and companies alike began shamelessly denying evidence of fraud in plain sight. I went to law school to be equipped to tackle scientific fraud cases that would be unlikely to resolve through public exposure alone.
Recent achievements include:
- Acting as lead counsel for the whistleblower in a $15 million NIH grant fraud recovery by a member of the community of post-publication data analysts and reviewers, sometimes called “sleuths,” who detect fraudulent research while analyzing the scientific literature.
- Representing the whistleblower in a $900 million kickback settlement with Biogen arising from payments to doctors for expert consulting engagements that our client alleged the company did not need but entered into for the purposes of inducing prescriptions of the company’s MS drugs.
- Substantially contributing to DOJ’s $10 million NIH grant fraud recovery from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston through work on the government’s investigation during my time in law school.