Keeping Research in Perspective : Audits, yes; witch hunts, no

Auditors are still finding mistakes in bills submitted by universities for the billions of dollars in research they do for the federal government.

The dollar figures don’t compare to the Stanford University case, in which claims of overbilling have reached $230 million. Stanford still disputes major elements of the government’s case.

Some of the challenged bills appear to result from shoddy bookkeeping. There is no evidence so far of a national crime wave of campus fraud. There are important reasons for clarity on that point.

One is that there is a lot of fine print in these numbers. For example, a recent audit by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of 14 universities found $7.9 million in billings from the University of Michigan that don’t follow the rules. But it turns out that $5.9 million had been disallowed by the federal government before the audit. So it isn’t accurate to suggest that the $7.9 million figure is what’s still in question.

Of course that does not let Michigan off the hook for submitting a bill that included the costs of sending administrators to the 1989 Rose Bowl and of producing television commercials for the school.

Some problems appear to be bureaucratic in origin. In some past negotiations the federal rules for repayment of overhead on campus research, especially for the Defense Department, were not absolutely clear. To get the work started, federal negotiators would set their own rules, case by case. Then campuses and the federal government would sign agreements stipulating how much the government would reimburse for overhead costs.

The new rules seek uniform standards that do away with case-by-case agreements. But is it fair that campuses that made contracts under the old rules are called into question?

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) did his duty, discovering the overcharges and getting better rules. But his approach is often heavy-handed, suggesting a last reason for keeping research budgets in perspective: Cases like these can turn into witch hunts.

Research to keep the nation in top form in technology is too important to America’s future to risk a perception that it is basically dirty work, or to hound good scientists to search for safer jobs.