A principal investigator (PI) who was initially accused of one instance of plagiarism noted that he had similarly copied text into two other National Science Foundation (NSF) proposals as a way of explaining how he did citations in applications versus in publications. But, as the NSF Office of Inspector General described it, “the PI’s response to our inquiry did not dispel the allegation,” and OIG ultimately determined he had “knowingly committed plagiarism” in three proposals by inserting text from three sources.
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But the PI’s university had itself found that he was “not culpable” for four instances of plagiarism because he “did not realize he needed to be as thorough with citations in a proposal as he did in a publication” reasoning OIG called “inconsistent and contrary to NSF guidance.”