Sludge Watch ==> Georgia Univ - mute on fabricated sludge data to garner bioterror grant money?

[Maureen Reilly]

Scientist’s attorney says UGA spread false data to win grants

Apr 17, 2008

Filed under: BALTIMORE Examiner , Mike Silvestri , SLUDGE

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - A chance to score a federal research facility is 
driving the University of Georgia to deny intentionally spreading false data 
that supported the Environmental Protection Agency’s sewage sludge program, 
claims an attorney for a former EPA scientist.

The university is one of five finalists to house the National Bio and 
Agro-Defense Facility, which will study emerging terrorist and natural 
disease pandemics.

But it is also the target of a lawsuit filed by David Lewis, the former EPA 
microbiologist, claiming the school accepted federal grant money in 1999 to 
knowingly publish data based on fabricated information from wastewater 
treatment plants in Augusta, Ga.

“The False Claims Act lawsuit will prove, in great detail, how every level 
of supervision at the University of Georgia, including the office of the 
president, was directly involved in publishing the fake scientific data and 
preventing faculty members and a visiting scientist, Dr. David Lewis, from 
blowing the whistle on the scientific fraud occurring at EPA and the 
University of Georgia,” Lewis’ lawyer Edwin Hallman, wrote in a Feb. 29 
letter to UGA President Michael Adams.

“I can fully appreciate the ramifications it would have on the University of 
Georgia’s bid to become a national center for agro-bioterrorism research if 
President Adams were to truthfully acknowledge the role his office has 
played in the fabrication of scientific data,” Hallman added in a March 20 
letter.

Adams declined comment on the lawsuit, spokesman Tom Jackson said.

The university’s School of Agriculture is headed by a former University of 
Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources associate dean, Jay 
Angle, whom Georgia lauded in news releases for his success dispelling 
environmental concerns about sewage sludge.

A federal judge recently ruled against the U.S. Department of Agriculture 
and found that sludge treated in Augusta contained heavy metals that were 
thousands of times over the permitted toxicity levels.

But Georgia Assistant Attorney General Julie Anderson said that the reports 
referenced in federal Judge Anthony Alaimo’s opinion are different from 
those Lewis alleges were intentionally fabricated.

Anderson wrote in response to Hallman: “Even accepting Judge Alaimo’s 
finding that certain UGA scientists’ research or advice was ‘faulty or 
incomplete,’ which we think we can prove otherwise, that finding does not 
support a claim that any of the defendants ‘knowingly’ submitted a false 
claim to the federal government.”

http://www.examiner.com/a-1345614~Scientist_s_attorney_says_UGA_spread_false_data_to_win_grants.html