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Case Review

The US National Science Foundation is examining suspected cases of plagiarism among its funded grant applications, ScienceInsider reports. An audit by the agency's inspector general office of all 8,000 funded proposals from fiscal year 2011 with plagiarism-detecting software uncovered about 100 instances of suspected plagiarism. "My group is now swamped," James Kroll, the head of administrative investigations in that office, tells ScienceInsider.

Further, Allison Lerner, the NSF inspector general, recently told a congressional panel that the number of allegations of research misconduct has tripled during the last decade, ScienceInsider adds. "The acceptable rate for me should be zero. The IG's results indicate that it's very important to train everybody … so we can bring that rate down," Subra Suresh, the NSF director, says.