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A researcher at the University of Connecticut has recently been charged with fraud regarding his work on the health effects of wine.
26 articles by Dipak K. Das, published in 11 separate journals, have been under scrutiny since January 2009, when his school was contacted anonymously about "research irregularities in his laboratory." 145 separate instances of falsification have been highlighted. The University has now published a 60,000 page report on Das's research, which has then been transferred to the Office of Research Integrity, an investigative bureaucracy that tracks government-granted research fraud.
Das's work was on the positive effects of resveratrol, a component in red wine that is linked to longevity in animals. This episode is not likely to affect the field of resveratrol study, however, because his work was largely peripheral.
The broader concern is that of research funding -- a scarce resource. Federal funding is getting hard to come by for health studies that truly need the cash, but Das was recently able to rake in two grants of $890,000 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which the University is returning.
Moreover, Das is not considered to be a particularly visible researcher, although he is prolific: his name is found in 588 articles listed on Google Scholar, 117 of which are connected to resveratrol.
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