WIKIMEDIA, VALERIE EVERETT

A former Iowa State University (ISU) scientist who pled guilty to felony counts of research misconduct earlier this year for adding human antibodies to blood from rabbits to make an HIV vaccine appear more effective is going to jail. Dong-Pyou Han, who was forced to resign from ISU in 2013 after the fraud was discovered, will serve 57 months in prison and will have to repay the $7.2 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant that funded the research, according to The Des Moines Register.

“I deeply regret any and all misconduct,” Han said in the Iowa courtroom where he was sentenced last week (July 1). “I meant no harm to anyone.”

Such stiff penalties are rare in cases of scientific misconduct. Guilty parties are usually subject to fines and prohibitions from receiving further federal research funding, but there have been a handful of instances where...